Aribert Reimann - Die Gespenstersonate
Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1984
Friedemann Layer, Heinz Lukas-Kindermann, Hans Günter Nöcker, Martha Mödl, Horst Hiestermann, David Knitson, Gudrun Sieber, Donald Grobe, William Dooley, Barbara Scherler, Kaja Borris
Arthaus Musik - DVD
Aribert Reimann's chamber opera Die Gespenstersonate (The Ghost Sonata) is an adaptation of the play by the same name by August Strindberg and it's a fairly faithful one too, in tone as much as in its translation of Strindberg's text. It's a typically bleak outlook from the Swedish dramatist on human relations, cynical of family structures, marriage and the social values that extend through them out into society. It's a familiar subject also for Reimann, who has explored similar themes in adaptations of various other classical and literary works, in Lear and most recently in Medea. Those are both large scale works that make use of huge orchestral forces and jarring cacophonous music for effect, but Die Gespenstersonate achieves much the same impact through Reimann's powerful use of a chamber orchestra, the arrangement putting one in mind of the sinister undercurrents created in Britten's The Turn of the Screw.
As the title indicates ghosts also play a part in Die Gespenstersonate, but they are likewise scarcely any more unsettling or disturbed than the 'living' characters in the play. At the centre of the work is the Director Jakob Hummel, a tyrannical force who has bought up the debts of the Colonel and aims to assert his authority over his estate in the same way he does with his own household. He introduces the student, the son of the Colonel to the various figures in the house, berating them for old crimes they have committed, intent on "pulling up the weeds to reveal the crime", although we find that the Director is far from guiltless himself.
The bizarre household includes a living Mummy and even some ghosts that only the student is able to see, all of them silently going through the motions of living together in mutual hatred and suspicion, but unable to escape from the crimes that bind them together. "We've parted ways countless times", the Mummy confesses, "but then we're always drawn back together again". The Director wants to destroy it all, but the Mummy believes that there is a way of erasing the past, through repentance for the sins that have been committed.
Reimann's version of the work would appear to put this idea into a German post-war context, where the sins of the past still hang over the people, binding them together in silent guilt, casting an influence over the present day that prevents them moving forward. Despite being separated from that time and free of guilt, even the student is affected by those actions in the past, repaying what he is led to believe are his father's, principally in the ghost that arises in the shape of a lost woman who falls into a pit whenever he tries to reach for her. The split level stage of the Deutsche Oper's 1984 production, emphasises the division between past and present, the upper level inhabited by the grotesque characters of the household seen through the transparent floor.
Reimann's score is moody and unsettling with deep low tones, creating and edginess between the characters in the way that the instruments weave between one another and clash in dissonance. The scoring for the voices creates a similar effect, some of the roles very wide in tessitura in a way that is typical for Reimann, with sharp rises followed by deep plunges. Much of the text of the play is largely spoken-singing, but when Reimann uses the full range of expression for the content, breaking into sung phrases when required for extra emphasis. The young student, who perhaps is led through a greater emotional journey than the rest of the fossilised inhabitants, seems to have the biggest emotional journey in this regard.
Recorded at its world premiere in Berlin in 1984, the performances are everything they ought to be, with a striking cast taking on the challenging roles well. Released on DVD as part of Arthaus Musik's series of archive Deutsche Oper releases, the image quality is inevitably Standard Definition only, but the 4:3 image is bright and clear, capturing well the whole tone and mood of the piece as it was performed at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin. The PCM Stereo audio track is excellent. There are no extra features other than the information and synopsis provided in the enclosed booklet. The DVD-9 disc is all-region compatible, with subtitles in German, English, French, Spanish and Italian.
Giuseppe Verdi - Giovanna d'Arco
Teatro alla Scala, 2015
Riccardo Chailly, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Anna Netrebko, Francesco Meli, Devid Cecconi, Dmitry Beloselskiy
ARTE Concert - 7 December 2015
I suppose it can't be easy for La Scala to aspire to be a modern progressive European opera house and at the same time keep the more vociferous elements of its audience happy. The opening performance of the new season on the day celebrating the city's patron saint is always a useful barometer for measuring where the Milan opera house is going to sit in the coming year and how successful those efforts are going to be. Based on the new production of Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, with Riccardo Chailly taking over from Daniel Barenboim as principal conductor, there seems to be some measure of compromise involved and a return to the Scala's core Italian repertoire. While there might be a few reservations, it's hard however not to see the big opening night performance as being largely a successful one.
It's probably safest to give the Italian public at La Scala a Verdi opera, but based on last year's Tcherniakov La Traviata, that's not necessarily a guarantee of unanimous acclaim. Rather than beg comparisons with another Rigoletto or La Traviata, La Scala have instead chosen to open the 2015/16 season with of one of the composer's lesser-known but worthy early operas, Giovanna d'Arco, one moreover that was first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1845. If it's done right you're onto a winner and La Scala take no chances here engaging Anna Netrebko, a singer willing and capable of adding another striking Verdi soprano role to her repertoire. It's a role she has sung before only in concert in Salzburg in 2013, but here she performs it on the dramatic stage for the first time. Netrebko doesn't disappoint.
Joan of Arc is one of those challenging Verdi soprano roles that sound amazing when they are done right, but there are few who are capable of doing it with the kind of passion, control and personality that Netrebko brings to the role here. Her deep voice does occasionally sound like it's getting 'woolier', but it's a big and expressive voice that can take on the technical challenges of Giovanna. Netrebko can also throw herself into a performance without putting a step wrong or a note out of place. Her performance here is utterly professional, almost too good you might even think and too smooth in delivery, but no - it's simply superb singing and a fine dramatic performance, no bones about it.
It's by no means a one-woman show however, and there are other significant roles in this opera that are well cast here, with Francesco Meli a wonderfully lyrical Carlo VII, and good supporting performances from Devid Cecconi replacing Carlos Alvarez as Giacomo and Dmitry Beloselskiy as Talbot. It helps that these performances are all complementary, working well with one another and with Netrebko - Meli in particular forming an incredible duo with Netrebko. I wasn't totally sold on the musical performance under Chailly. Musically, it feels a little restrained and this early Verdi could do with a bit more 'letting loose'. I haven't seen any criticism of Chailly elsewhere however, so it's perhaps best not to judge that from the less than perfect medium of a streamed internet broadcast.
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier production seems to find a good compromise between period and conceptual, but it doesn't work entirely satisfactorily. It's perhaps not the most original way of achieving that, Giovanna here seeming to be a 19th century woman suffering a mental breakdown, identifying in her dreams with Joan of Arc. The idea has merit and basis in the underlying psychology of Joan of Arc, particularly with how it's explored in Solera's libretto based on Friedrich Schiller's drama. The woman/Joan appears to have suffered a trauma, perhaps sexual, and seeks to find empowerment in her dreams of being the religious saviour of her people. Her love for her king is somewhat ambiguous however, and it raises troubling notions of how she can retain her purity and chastity, particularly in relation to her father and society look upon her presumption.
The action then all takes place in Giovanna's bedroom, the floor and walls slightly tilted, the king appearing in her visions all in gold, like a statue come to life. By the end of the prelude however, the dream has exploded into full-blown delusion, the armies and citizens pouring through the walls in spectacular fashion. The whole things brings to mind Netrebko's performance in Iolanta for the Met, and the father here is similarly a protective, powerful authority figure who attempts to hold her back from her true self or who she wants to be. She needs to be grander to overcome his objection and concerns and be seen as pure in his eyes. The whole father-daughter set-up very much Verdi however, and thematically very close to Rigoletto. Chailly highlights those musical references in the shimmering lightning effects of one scene and particularly in the final death scene.
Leiser and Caurier take this theme of religious purity and redemption a little bit further, having Jesus walk onto the stage and pass on a cross for her to carry - but it fits in with the heightened drama here and the frequent references to Giovanna's chastity. It also strengthens the charge of blasphemy laid against Giovanna for her to be burnt at the stake. It has an internal consistency then, even if it is far removed from Verdi, Solera and Schiller's original idea, never mind the historical reality. You could see this Giovanna's battlefield death as merely being a delusion of a woman on the stake, only the stake is also a delusion in this version, which doesn't leave you with a whole lot of reality to grasp onto. You get a fairly modern production then, but it's one which still allows all the armour and stirring calls to battle. Most of all however you have Verdi and Anna Netrebko, and I think most would happily settle for that.
Links: ARTE Concert, Teatro alla Scala
Leoš Janáček - Věc Makropulos
Wiener Staatsoper, 2015
Jakub Hrůša, Peter Stein, Laura Aikin, Ludovit Ludha, Margarita Gritskova, Markus Marquardt, Wolfgang Bankl, Thomas Ebenstein, Aura Twarowska, Ilseyar Khayrullova, Carlos Osuna, Heinz Zednik, Marcus Pelz
Staatsoper Live at Home - 20 December 2015
You don't see a great deal of 20th century works at the Vienna State Opera, but one composer who remains popular and deserves a place there is Leoš Janáček. In addition to revivals of Otto Schenk's sumptuous The Cunning Little Vixen and David Pountey's Jenůfa this season (both of which can be seen broadcast Live at Home in April 2016), the Wiener Staatsoper's new production of Věc Makropulos is quite a commitment to a major composer who is scarcely as well represented in any other European opera house. While the 'new production' might look impressive and faithful to Janáček's vision, there's little here however that really feels 'new' about it.
Janáček always feels more like a modern composer than a classical composer to me, but in Peter Stein's production of Věc Makropulos, as with Schenk's beautiful but starkly literal and unimaginative production of Cunning Little Vixen, you get the impression that the Vienna State Opera want to wrap Janáček up with mothballs so that he can play safely alongside the Zeffirelli production of La Bohème and Schenk's production of Die Fledermaus there. I can't help feeling that by playing safe Peter Stein entirely misses the point of Věc Makropulos. The opera's main character, Emilia Marty is a 337 year old woman who moves on and refreshes herself with the times in order to retain her allure and mystery. Věc Makropulos essentially must take place in 'the present', but this production doesn't look like it has aged in the hundred years since it was written.
True, just because Věc Makropulos is 'science fiction' doesn't mean it has to look futuristic, but miring the work inside a frozen time-capsule in the year 1922 doesn't do an awful lot for the theme of existing outside the laws of time. You can't really fault the production however for adhering precisely and with utmost fidelity to the set designs and stage directions as they are in the libretto. It looks exactly how you would imagine an ideal period production of Věc Makropulos would be if it were lifted straight off the page. Dr Kolenaty's office in Prague in 1922 for Act I is the Kafkaesque bureaucratic library of books, volumes and case papers, with steps leading up to the highest shelves. Act II shows a backstage view of stage looking out onto an opera house with a stage throne (as specified in the libretto) sitting plump in the middle of the stage. Emilia's hotel room in Act III is all clean Art Deco curves, straight lines and glossy surfaces.
Arguably, the fact that the settings are traditional and period shouldn't matter as much as what you do within it. Sadly, there was absolutely no imagination or interpretation applied here either. Perhaps I noticed it more because there were unusually no English subtitles provided for this Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home production, meaning I had to rely on a text of the libretto from elsewhere while watching the performance, but it is astonishing how literal the production is in its translation of the directions. Peter Stein not only creates the set design to the exact specifications of the libretto, but he also follows every single movement, gesture and even lighting direction to the letter.
In Act III for example when Emilia Marty returns after her collapse and her off-stage rapid aging, the stage directions specify a greenish lighting. Sure enough, the panels of the wall cast a greenish glow over the stage until the directions call for the lighting to turn red at the dramatic final scene, and the Vienna production dutifully complies. I don't think I've ever seen a production reproduced with such slavish exactitude as this one. The argument of course is why shouldn't the production follow the directions to the letter since that is clearly what the composer wanted? If you've ever wanted an answer to that question it's provided here. It creates a dull, superficial and lifeless production that holds no surprises, but rather just feels like it is going through the motions, moving people around restrictively like puppets.
Janáček's greatest operas are all about 'life', about the passing of time, about being in the moment and accepting one's humanity but with an awareness of being part of something greater. He treats the subject with more sensitivity and humanity in Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen, as well as in his final opera From the House of the Dead, but there can be much more made of the cruel fate of Elina Makropulos than is achieved in this drearily literal production that ignores the subtext and meaning and has no emphasis or ideas of its own to bring to the stage. As lovely as the production looks, it's so dull and unimaginative that it almost but not quite takes away from the real spark of the life that is principally there in Janáček's music.
Jakub Hrůša's conducting sounded to me like it was the musical equivalent of the staging. It was a strictly literal interpretation and well played but with no inspiration or verve. Janáček's music seems to allow for wider interpretation than most, and I've never heard any of his works sound the same twice. Some concentrate on the rhythmic pulse, others spin and leap according to the patterns of the sung language, but there should essentially be a spark of life there. It's hard to entirely extinguish the essence of that in the composer's wonderful arrangements and it does remain intact here, occasionally breaking through to enliven the monotony of the dramatic walk-through.
The singing too was exceptionally good, which is a bonus, and this is a very tricky work to sing. Laura Aikin in particular was simply outstanding as Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos. I hadn't paid enough attention to the cast list, and couldn't quite recognise her in this role when she appeared, but I was very impressed when I checked during the interval. Whether Aikin is the right age now to play the role of an 'ageless beauty' is debatable, but she certainly gave her character the kind of ambiguity required, somewhere between the cold indifference of having seen and experienced it all, and anxiety and vulnerability over the cruel uncertainty of her fate. Certainly in terms of the singing, Aikin could hardly be faulted, bringing more personality than the stiff stage directions permitted.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video
Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel
Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015
Vladimir Jurowski, Barrie Kosky, Evgeny Nikitin, Svetlana Sozdateleva, Heike Grötzinger, Elena Manistina, Vladimir Galouzine, Kevin Conners, Okka von der Damerau, Igor Tsarkov, Jens Larsen
Staatsoper.TV - 12th December 2015
We are well used to seeing productions from the Bavarian State Opera that are more than a little unconventional, often even seeming to have scant regard for the directions of the libretto. With Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel - a fairly rare work that was first performed only after the composer's death - the Munich opera company seem to have found a work that is truly bizarre enough to fit with what commonly takes place on their stage. Somewhat surprisingly then, especially since it's Barrie Kosky who is given charge of the direction here, the production struggles to match or keep up with the strange happenings that take place in Prokofiev's highly unusual work.
Even by Prokofiev's extravagant operatic range, The Fiery Angel is over-the-top in almost every respect. This is a composer who can plunge into the particularly Russian nature of the worlds of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with ambitious and dynamic works like War and Peace and The Gambler, but he also reveals a side for the comic and the absurd in his Betrothal in a Monastery and The Love for Three Oranges. Musically and thematically, The Fiery Angel is no less flamboyantly orchestrated for the rhythms, patterns and strange paths that its plot takes. It's not an opera that is memorable for melodies or arias, but every dramatic line and gesture is underscored with complex arrangements and an invigorating punchy delivery.
The music then is perfectly suitable for a work that has few recognisable sentiments in its headlong descent into madness. The person suffering from delusions that take her on a spiraling sequence of hallucinations is a young woman called Renata. She has been discovered by Ruprecht, a rather more worldly-wise man who has found her in his hotel room raving about her childhood encounter with a fiery angel, Madiel. The angel however, becoming aware of Renata's growing carnal lust, abandoned her, but Renata believed that Madiel subsequently took human form in the shape of Count Heinrich. However, he too abandoned her after a year.
Ruprecht is inclined to take advantage of the young woman's delusions in her search for Heinrich/Madiel, her fiery angel, but as he makes the pretence of assisting her by exploring esoteric texts and seeking instruction from Agrippa von Nettesheim, he soon becomes caught up in the strange world that Renata lives in. The line between fantasy and reality (and erotic role-playing) becomes increasingly blurred as they are visited by nightmarish visions of Faust and Mephistopheles, which in turn leads to a kind of religious epiphany when Renata decides to enter a convent only to face trail by the Inquisitor for being possessed by a demon. The whole nightmarish descent into deeper madness is played through here over almost two and quarter hours without an interval. With Vladimir Jurowski conducting the Bayerisches Staatsorchester through Prokofiev's challenging score, it really is a whirlwind ride.
With such a subject and treatment, you would expect that the stage presentation would also be on the extravagant side, particularly as it's the Bayerische Staatsoper and Barrie Kosky is directing. Surprisingly, the opera set for the hotel room looks more like the Marschallin's boudoir in Der Rosenkavalier, with numerous footmen and porters on call at Ruprecht's arrival. With Prokofiev's tone being fairly manic from the start, perhaps Kosky felt it might be a little better to introduce a little bit of normality at this stage by way of contrast to where the opera goes later. That might not be a bad idea if the director were able to establish a more consistent tone that works with the opera, but instead all Kosky has to contrast it with in the latter half of the work is all the familiar camp hallmarks that seem rather too crude to have any bearing on the intent of the opera.
Kosky goes to town of course on the tavern scene, with the obligatory dancing men in drag, and he has Mephistopheles wave his willie around and play suggestively with large sausages. As one of the more unhinged scenes in a fairly bizarre opera, one doesn't expect the director to read anything deep into the irreverent and sexually-charged content, but there are surely more inventive ways of doing it than this. In a work like The Fiery Angel, you're not so much looking for elucidation as something that might engage and hold the audience through the increasingly absurd turn of events. On its own, Prokofiev's difficult score is fascinating in its own right, but at over two hours long and with no intermission (an intermission would only break the mood and the flow), it needs a little more visual engagement. The letterboxing of the stage and Rebecca Ringst's set designs at least manages to inventively keep things moving through a five-act opera, suggesting an interior world more than actual locations.
The uninterrupted two and a quarter length of the work is just as much a challenge for the performers, particularly as Vladimir Jurowski is intent on keeping up the pace and momentum, fairly rattling though the complexities of the score. Taking on most of the singing challenges as Renata and on the stage for pretty much the entire length of the performance, Svetlana Sozdateleva copes incredibly well, even when she has to endure the indignities of Kosky's direction. Such is the commitment and personality that she brings to a difficult character that Sozdateleva makes almost everyone else seem rather dull by comparison - Kevin Conners' delirious Mephistopheles excepted. Evgeny Nikitin consequently, while he sings well, never seems to get to grips with who Ruprecht is or what he wants. Prokofiev, admittedly, doesn't make that easy to determine, but you might have hoped for more from Kosky and the Bayerische Staatsoper.
The next live opera broadcast from the Bayerische Staatsoper is a new production of Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA on 19th March, conducted by Zubin Mehta and directed by Johannes Erath, with an outstanding cast that includes Piotr Beczala, Simon Keenlyside (fingers crossed) and Anja Harteros.
Links: StaatsoperTV
Gaetano Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor
Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège - 2015
Jesús Lopez Cobos, Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, Annick Massis, Celso Albelo, Ivan Thirion, Roberto Tagliavini, Pietro Picone, Alexise Yerna, Denzil Delaere
Culturebox - 25 November 2015
Donizetti's opera adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's 'The Bride of Lammermoor' is so bound up in the period gothic themes of ghosts, revenge and madness that there seems to be little point in updating the work on the stage or seek to deconstruct it for any deeper meaning. The best that one can do is frame the work with a little historical distance from the melodrama, but as we've seen with the Royal Opera House's production of that other Scott adaptation, Rossini's La Donna del Lago (The Lady of the Lake), there's not an awful lot to be gained from such an approach either. Better surely to just present the work in its own terms.
We'll reserve judgement on that until we see Katie Mitchell's new production at Covent Garden next year, but in the meantime, the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège under the direction of Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera decide to stick with the traditional approach for Lucia del Lammermoor, and in a big way too. Conductor Jesús Lopez Cobos even goes right back to Donizetti's original manuscript to find a purer dramatic version of the composer's vision before it and its famous mad scene became the favourite toy of the world's greatest coloratura sopranos over the ages.
Make no mistake though, whatever way you approach Lucia di Lammermoor you still need a soprano of great ability and you also need to convey the essence of the gothic, with thunderstorms and heavy mists drenching the stage in the atmosphere of its Scottish locations. It wouldn't be like Stefano Mazzonis or Liège to let us down on either front, and indeed they manage to give a fair account of the work as it is on its own terms with even a little bit of necessary flair where it is required. Rather than appear stuffily traditional then, there is a wonderful solidity to the Liège production in both the staging and the singing that anchors the opera a little more securely than might otherwise be the case.
That doesn't mean that there is any lack of distinct interpretation or personality applied to the work. There's a full three-dimensional quality to the music and to the staging here that allows us to explore the heart of the drama. Jesús Lopez Cobos sets the tone well in the moody, rumbling overture, while the stage is coloured a bruised purplish-blue to presage the gothic storm to come. The set gives us castle ramparts, a forest and a fountain, as well as a full tower that rotates to let us in on the looming crisis between rival Ashton and Ravenswood clans. Enrico has plans for his sister Lucia's marriage, but she is in love with Edgardo from the Ravenswood family and Enrico intends to put a stop to that.
The lighting in particular reflects all the moods and conflicting emotions that are bound up in the story, and the costume design of the well-wrapped clansmen is also far more realistic of what one would wear living in a Scottish castle in a 17th century winter. Even that however is not without some stylistic flair that seems to give real substance and body to a romantic melodrama. Settling for a largely traditional approach in the production then, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and there is inevitably a bit of both here, but it ultimately yields worthwhile results.
The dramatic declamations of the overheated (or hard-to-swallow) libretto and the more prosaic moments of the music would be difficult to get through if everyone was standing around and singing out to the audience, but Mazzonis manages to keep the characters engaged with one another. The upside of this is that combined with the attractive staging it's enough to keep the audience engaged and ready for the big moments when they occur. As long as you have good singers in the roles - and that's a big enough ask - you're on sure footing with this approach.
The ghost in the fountain aria ("Regnava nel silenzio"), the sextet and the ending of Act II, the mad scene in Act III and the conclusion are all vital, and fortunately the main performers and the chorus are all up to the task. Annick Massis has force and control of the coloratura, but more importantly has what Cobos demands for this production and that's the dramatic character to get the essence across without the unnecessary elaboration that has been added to the role over the years. Celso Abelo is Spanish, but he has a great Italian tenor voice and is impressive in the role of Edgardo. This is the kind of strong central singing team that is required for this work and they acquit themselves admirably.
Another original element that Cobos brings back to the work is the use of the glass harmonica for Lucia's mad scene. Along with a more restrained approach to the singing by Massis, this gives the scene more of an effective haunting quality rather than the full-blown off-her-rocker insanity with which Lucia is more often characterised. Or, depending on your expectations for this work, it could come across like the murder and decapitation scene that takes place in a room on the tower; a rather a rather bloodless affair, lacking in the kind of intensity you might expect.
There is more enough drama within the storyline and within the original musical score however for it to work on its own terms and for the purposes of this production, and it is indeed an enjoyable account of the work that clearly meets with the approval of the Liège audience. If Massis takes the role of Lucia down a step, Abelo is good enough to make up for the difference for the final scene to have all the necessary impact. Even if the blocks of masonry that he pulls down upon himself seem to bounce in rather too much of a rubbery fashion to do any real damage, the illusion of opera staging, brought together on so many other levels here, provides all the necessary weight.
Links: Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Culturebox
Gaetano Donizetti - L'Elisir d'amore
Teatro alla Scala at Malpensa Airport, Milan - 2015
Fabio Luisi, Grischa Asagaroff, Bianca Tognocchi, Vittorio Grigolo, Mattia Olivieri, Michele Pertusi, Eleonora Buratto, Jan Pezzali, Mauro Edantippe
ARTE Concert - 17 September 2015
Although I've come to appreciate and admire some of Donizetti's lesser known works, I've never been a great fan of what is probably his most popular work, L'Elisir d'Amore. I have to admit though that its popularity does at least lead to some inventive settings and reinterpretations, even if the humour and characterisation that can be derived from its situations have always seemed rather limited. It's a work however that merits attention particularly when it's performed by an Italian company and you would expect La Scala in Milan to bring out the full value of the work. The essential Italian quality of the work is supported here by an unusual setting that if it's not the most inventive is at least challenging.
Anyone who believes that opera is still a vital art form where even Donizetti still has a place and has something to communicate to the world today, has to admire any attempt to get opera out of the theatre and away from theatricality, and attempt to reach a new audience. Cinema showings and internet streaming are one way, as is the use of directing talent from the theatre and cinema, as well as the employment of directors with distinctive visions and a determination to apply it to classic works. Physically taking the stagingess out of the opera house is also an admirable endeavour, and surprisingly, one that often works remarkably well. La Scala's attempt to stage L'Elisir d'Amore at Malpensa airport in Milan starts out like a good idea then, but it doesn't successfully follow through on its ambitions.
The airport is a surprisingly versatile place for an opera, and it's not the first time a live TV broadcast of an opera has been made from one. A few years ago there was an impressive and spectacular production of Mozart's Die Entführung dem Serail broadcast live from the airport at Salzburg. Adapting the public spaces and even the runway to the needs of the libretto, it even succeeded in putting a relevant modern spin on the intent of the work. Die Entführung isn't a particularly deep work by any means, but it does have rather more to it than L'Elisir d'Amore, you would think. So how does flashmobbing Donizetti at Milan-Malpensa fit in with the 'themes' or even just the comic situations of Donizetti's sparkling melodramma giocoso?
Well, it's a bright, lively opera and one that suits an open public performance. This Elisir opens in an airport cafe where Nemorino is a waiter and Adina the oblivious, indifferent owner sitting reading her book while Nemorino pines over her failure to respond to his admiration. Belcore is, of course, a handsome pilot in smart uniform, flanked by glamorous air hostesses as he parades through the concourse to the departure gates. Dulcamara is an amateur pilot in leather jacket and goggles who is flown is a small private plane with a portable drinks cabinet that he sets up on a prepared stage. Belcore of course recruits Nemorino not into the army here, but as a member of his cabin crew. It's not a perfect match for the opera and the locations are not used as inventively as Salzburg. Instead of a stage in the opera house, all they manage to do is set one up in an airport with airport travellers seated around it.
Having made some effort at least in the first Act to have it semi-credibly located in an airport, the airport workers inexplicably abandon their modern-day dress and behaviour momentarily in Act II for clownish pantomime costumes, marching onto the stage built in the check-in area to celebrate the coming wedding of Adina and Belcore. I don't know why this occurs, but it looks ridiculous. Further defeating the point, much of the remainder of the work subsequently takes place in this main location, on a stage, singing out to travellers who obviously have a long time to wait for their flights. 'Una furtiva lagrima' at least is well staged as the new cabin crew member Nemorino takes his bags through security. Unfortunately, the artificiality of most of the production is compounded by the inclusion of a French and an Italian host who step in now and again to explain to the TV audience what is going on, interviewing members of the audience, and they even discuss aspects of the work with the singers, partly in character, partly stepping out if it.
It's not entirely satisfactory, but some respond better to the setting than others and you can get away with pretty much anything in L'Elisir d'Amore if you enter into it with the spirited indulgence of the commedia dell'arte origins of the work. With the production settling for traditional over the opportunities offered by the airport locations, all that is left is the quality of the opera performance itself, and fortunately, it's reasonably good. Vittorio Grigolo is a bright and committed Nemorino, singing well and Michele Pertusi gives us his usual entertaining Dulcamara, a familiar comic role that is comfortably within his range. Mattia Olivieri is not quite as commanding as he might be for Belcore but proves to be a suitable rival for Adina's affections. There's nothing particularly cruel or misguided about this Adina - just a woman who can't make her mind up and is ready to act spitefully on a whim. I've seen Eleonora Buratto sing this role before in Asagaroff's production at Zurich and she plays it well here again, if not having quite the full force of delivery.
I don't know if there is anything more to be gained from staging L'Elisir d'Amore in an airport than is already apparent in its simple storyline. What the La Scala production demonstrates is perhaps not so much that L'Elisir is still a relevant work with some important message for today, as much as the way that opera can be something living and vital without compromising on its essence. There aren't many other popular forms of art that are capable of being performed live in a public place with such a high level of artistic merit as this. Art installations in public places have limited appeal and no-one seems particularly interested in putting theatre on in public places, yet somehow La Scala are able to pitch up Fabio Luisi, a full orchestra and some of the finest singers in Italian opera into Milan-Malpensa airport with a custom-made production and film the whole proceedings live without there being any significant decline in artistic quality.
One might have hoped for more however, because really, this is just a perfunctory run-though of the opera, particularly from Fabio Luisi. The performances do at least have the kind of freshness that revitalises the work to some extent and the airport setting initially serves as a good showcase (or gimmick if you like) to show a wider audience how entertaining, accessible and versatile opera can be. Perhaps it's the change of environment, but even the more jaded viewer or one unconvinced by L'Elisir d'Amore can observe the artistry involved in a new light. It's live and it's an event; one that, despite the use of discreet radio microphones and headsets, doesn't compromise the essential character or nature of the art form, but rather shows how enduring and adaptable it can be.
Links: Teatro alla Scala, ARTE Concert
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Idomeneo
Theater an der Wien, 2015
René Jacobs, Damiano Michieletto, Richard Croft, Gaëlle Arquez, Sophie Karthäuser, Marlis Petersen, Julien Behr, Mirko Guadagnini
Culturebox - 20 November 2015
Idomeneo is a problematic work in the Mozart canon, belonging to his youthful period and tied to the format and conventions of opera seria. It is unquestionably Mozart however, highly accomplished and full of melody and beauty, but with a darker edge of terror here. It's the latter aspect that is an unfamiliar quality from what we are accustomed to hearing in Mozart, and it often seems to be at odds or inadequately expressed by the beauty of the music itself. Damiano Michieletto's production of Idomeneo for the Theater an der Wien seems to get more from the work by focussing on that darker side, and is assisted in drawing those qualities from a closer period interpretation of the music by René Jacobs and the Freiburger Barockorchester.
Michelietto's production relies heavily on symbolism to emphasise the darker underlying context of Idomeneo beyond even the horror of the drama that unfolds. We are reminded of the fall of Troy and the damaging consequences of what the Greeks have brought back from the long drawn-out war on the highly-stylised stage set. Boxed-in by a set of curtains, the stage is a sand and mud pit filled with the boots of fallen warriors, the characters having to pick their way through it, sticking to the ground and stumbling over the lumps and bumps of this troubled landscape. It's here that we first see Ilia and get a sense of her predicament and state of mind. She can't escape from what has happened to her home and neither the love professed by Idamante nor his freeing of her captive people are enough to compensate for that.
There is more tension between Ilia and Idamante than you would traditionally see in this work since there is another lump or bump that is significant in this version. Ilia, the daughter of King Priam, is noticeably pregnant by the son of an enemy king, which only deepens her despair and confusion. The gift she had to offer Idomeneo when he returns back from the dead after the storm at sea is a package of baby clothes and an ultrasound scan of the baby she is carrying. Any kind of joyful news, whether its the liberation of the 'refugee' Trojans, Ilia's conflicted love for Idamante, or indeed Idamante's joy at the safe return of his father, is qualified and short-lived. Particularly the latter situation, since Idomeneo has rashly promised Neptune to sacrifice the first person he meets if he is allowed to survive and reach dry land.
The characterisation is thus somewhat more consistent here with the overall tone and it's very strongly developed and explored in this production; in appearance, in singing and in how each person reacts to one another. There's a lot of pent-up tension and no respite for anyone following the harrowing war that has just ended. The tension between Ilia and Idamante for example, should be obvious considering their backgrounds, but it is only really drawn out here by the symbolism, the direction of the performers and how they sing the roles, as well as by how Jacobs handles the musical direction. The usual bombastic emphasis of the romantic melodic line is toned down by the harder edge of the period instruments, Jacobs aiming for a simpler interpretation that seeks to find a truer expression for the dramatic content which might not be quite as developed here as in other Mozart works.
The casting and singing however are of the highest order, and it's noticeably this aspect - the lyrical qualities of the singing voice and what it is capable of expressing - that differentiates Mozart's late opera seria innovations from other works in this style. All of the singers here show how good this early Mozart can be when it has the right voices assigned to the roles, and when those roles are allowed to express the characterisation that is implicit in the situations they find themselves in. It's most evident in Richard Croft's Idomeneo. Like Kasper Holten's 2014 Vienna production, the King of Crete is visibly haunted here by the bloodshed and horror of the Trojan war, tormented by gore-covered ghosts. He's like Macbeth haunted by Banquo's ghost, driven mad, stumbling and flailing, self obsessed and full of self-pity, wallowing in the injustice of it all and hopelessly ineffectual as a consequence, often symbolically found in proximity to a bed.
Croft's voice has a softness, delicacy and lyricism that matches the requirements of this kind of Idomeneo. And even with the sweetest timbre, Sophie Karthäuser too can express the conflict and boiling anger that lies just beneath the surface of Ilia, making those beautiful da capo arias really express something fundamental about herself and her predicament. Just as impressive is Gaëlle Arquez as Idamante who proves here, if it needed to be made clear, that in the absence of a castrato, a mezzo-soprano can make much more of this role than a countertenor. There's a lovely voice there to be sure, but Arquez also demonstrates confidence in her expression, interpretation and colour.
The icing on the cake her is the luxury casting of Marlis Petersen as Electra. She fully involves herself in Michieletto's characterisation of Electra as a scheming glamour puss in blonde wig, wearing glittery dresses as she teeters through this landscape of misery in high-heels and shopping bags. She's the only person happy with the turn of events, since Idomeneo is forced to send her off with Idamante into the safety of exile, trying on a series of colourful outfits in a fashion-show rendition of 'Idol mio'. There's a little thinness creeping into the middle range, but Petersen is still capable of imbuing this role with great character, and her spirited performance is exactly what is needed to give the work that extra dimension and dynamic.
While the consistency of tone is maintained right through to the climax and is perhaps even bleaker in the ruins of Crete, I'm not sure that Act III holds together quite as strongly. As is often the case these days, Electra and Idomeneo are depicted as self-interested villains - and even lovers here - who pay the price for their actions. The singing and performances at least are just as strong and convincing, Sophie Karthäuser in particular delivering an amazing 'Zeffiretti lusinghieri', Gaëlle Arquez joining her impressively for the subsequent duet. Julien Behr also shows us the value of his Arbace here. If the direction throws everything in to try to make the final act a little more exciting - including the voice of Neptune seeming to come from Ilia's womb - it at least finds the right note to end on, Mozart's long chaccone accompanied by Ilia going into labour and giving birth on the stage. As far as establishing Idomeneo's out with the old and in with the new message, this production - as elsewhere - takes everything just that little bit further than most.
Links: Culturebox, Theater an der Wien
