Walshe - MARS (Dublin, 2025)

Jennifer Walshe - MARS

Irish National Opera, 2025

Elaine Kelly, Tom Creed, Jennifer Walshe, Nina Guo, Jade Phoenix, Sarah Richmond, Doreen Curran

Abbey Theatre, Dublin - 7th August 2025

It's high time that we had a full-length opera from Jennifer Walshe, internationally recognised as one of Ireland's most original contemporary musicians and performers. Working primarily with the voice, it had to be a natural progression and there were signs of her heading in that direction with her short work Libris Solar (2020) for Irish National Opera's 20 Shots of Opera and Ireland: A Dataset (2020), both presented during the COVID lockdown. Describing the latter piece as a 'radiophonic play', it was however a total musical-theatrical experience, albeit one unable to be performed before a live audience; an opera in all but name. It may not have been conventional but nothing Walshe does is conventional. MARS, her new work for Irish National Opera, employs many of the same techniques used in Ireland: A Dataset, taking a theme, exploring it from a number of angles rather than as a linear plot, and of course providing the usual injection of humour and not taking things too seriously.

Finding her voice, so to speak, at a time when there are serious wider contemporary issues to consider, the composer has worked with writer Mark O'Connell to develop a libretto for an opera on a more global scale, or perhaps one even more expansive that that. MARS takes us beyond the confines of the planet with a crew of four women astronauts in order to get away from consider the petty problems of the world from a distance, only to find that we bring our petty problems with us. And not just the 'petty problems' but the big ones that we can see troubling us in the present day. If you think there is danger in the power being placed in the hands of a small group of wealthy individuals with authoritarian leanings and their own space programmes, imagine what will happen when other planets come within reaching distance...

As far as it concerns the four women on the Buckminster on a nine month journey to Mars, the future is under new ownership, and that includes ownership of the crew just as they are about to touch down to explore the planet for underground water supplies to support the colony that has already been established on the planet. The company or international consortium that was financing the mission have been taken over by a corporation owned by 'tech bro' Axel Parchment, who has some 'innovative' ideas for developing and expanding the colony. Sally, Valentina, Judith and Svetlana have revised orders and a new mission; Mars needs women. But, in-between sending AI assisted messages and videos back home to raise the morale and gain new recruits, the crew make an important discovery that may enable them to take control (and control over their own bodies) back again.

The situation as outlined would seem to present the opportunity for some thoughtful contemplation on the essence of humanity, on the need to explore, stretch the boundaries of what we consider to be the human experience to incorporate new developments in technology and society; and to consider what to do when things go wrong, because things always go wrong. And indeed it does in MARS and Walshe does take a realistic response to those questions, but perhaps not initially in the way you might expect; like how these four adventurers react to the critical error that occurs when the USB drive containing the complete Criterion Collection set of movies is left behind and they have is Shrek 3 and Seasons 3 to 6 of The Housewives of Beverley Hills to get them through the isolation. It can't get much worse than that surely?

It would be a mistake to take it all too seriously, but it's more than just a joke. All too much of what happens here is recognisable in the almost unrecognisable world we are waking up to every morning, with developments in technology and AI advancing rapidly every day, distorting our familiar sense of reality, with wealthy individuals accruing more money, power and influence and exerting that control through populist appeal and dubious libertarian ideologies. Others might take a more conventional path through the challenges that face an all-woman space crew on a future expedition to Mars given this current direction of travel, but this is Jennifer Walshe and she takes the Jennifer Walshe way. Which is to say that the work is made up of a series of sketches and routines, playful in nature but with a little edge of satire.

There are some spoken work dialogues, some funny episodes, but mainly a lot of playing around with the opportunities suggested by the out of familiar world setting. Aside from the template established in Ireland: A Dataset, some sequences reminded me of Glass and Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, just simply revelling in the purity of the musical-theatrical situation with no concern of 'advancing the plot', emulating floating in zero gravity, running through wordless vocalisations and blending them with electronic sounds that also bring to mind Stockhausen's Licht, with a lament on a planetary exploration that seems to echo Ligeti's Atmosphères from 2001: A Space Odyssey. All of this is of course filtered through Walshe's sense of anarchic humour, with a few mordant swipes at popular culture and populist politics.

What is abundantly evident, even in the least serious of moments, is that Walshe has explored everything related to Mars exploration and even incorporates the sounds of space in the instrumentation through the use of synthesisers, in addition to more conventional instruments making unconventional sounds. Co-directed between Tom Creed and Walshe herself, the stage production - all credit to the incredible team that pulled this together - does exactly the same and it is genuinely groundbreaking in how the medium is also the message. Walshe has taken advantage of AI before and used it in Ireland: A Dataset, but the way the music, the sounds, the use of videos, live hand-held cameras, live distortion of voices are not just used for satire and parody, but to emphasise how much technology can be used and messages distorted. There is a lot going on and some of it just flashes by, but it all works alongside the plot and the content, an integral and equal part of the conception of the piece.

Which not to say that the human element of the work is relegated by the use of technology, otherwise that would negate the point of the work. Nina Guo, Jade Phoenix, Sarah Richmond and Doreen Curran are just superb, totally engaging in all-round performances that require acting, timing, collaboration and, despite necessarily being microphoned for mixing with the orchestra - all are experienced and brilliant opera singers that have their range fully put to the test. Those moments are used well and to terrific effect. Following its opening at Galway International Arts Festival in July and three sell-out performances at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, don't let anyone say there isn't an appetite for challenging contemporary opera and thankfully the INO seasons are always tremendously rich and varied, including contemporary Irish works, baroque opera, popular favourites and the odd rarity.

I'll be honest and say that despite the considerable efforts that have gone into the composition and marrying it to an inventive integrated production design, MARS is very entertaining and very much of the moment, but it doesn't feel like a substantial piece. Personally, I would have preferred if Walshe had just fully indulged the scenes in her random episodic fashion and left any conclusions to be drawn without the need (by writer Mark O'Connell?) to provide a conventional plot resolution, but maybe that's just me. MARS unquestionably has many other angles that are wholly Jennifer Walshe and couldn't be anyone else, and we can't ask for more than that. And perhaps there is more to the work than I'm giving her credit for; the world is indeed becoming increasingly absurd, heading into an unknown that is genuinely frightening, and MARS offers some hope that we can navigate our way through it.

External links: Irish National Opera, Jennifer Walshe on MARS in the Guardian

Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Bayreuth, 2025)

Richard Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2025

Daniele Gatti, Matthias Davids, Georg Zeppenfeld, Michael Spyres, Matthias Stier, Christina Nilsson, Christa Mayer, Michael Nagy, Jongmin Park, Martin Koch, Werner Van Mechelen, Jordan Shanahan, Daniel Jenz, Matthew Newlin, Gideon Poppe, Alexander Grassauer, Tijl Faveyts, Patrick Zielke, Tobias Kehrer

BR-Klassik Livestream - 25th July 2025

Matthias Davids' production doesn't look like any other production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg you might have seen. We expect that at Bayreuth of course, but we are definitely far removed these days from the more adventurous Meistersingers of Bayreuth in the recent past. Katharina Wagner's own controversial 2008 production was keen to genuinely tear down any familiar ground and truly put the work of German Art to the test just as Hans Sachs advocates, while last production by Barrie Kosky in 2017 had great fun turning the work inside out and putting Wagner on trial for antisemitism. Both were very much testing of Wagner's greatest expression of the power of art, the freedom of the artist and the artist as a revolutionary, as much in their conception as their adherence to the underlying intent of the work. Davids' view on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to see it as a paean to peace, love and understanding is not unreasonable and perhaps reflects our needs and desires in these troubled times, but it is a rather more limiting viewpoint on a work that contains so much more.

Better known as a director of musicals, Matthias Davids' lighter approach places emphasis on making the work look bright, colourful and comic. Those aren't characteristics that one typically associates with Wagner but Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is very much the exception to the typical Wagner music drama with its heavy emphasis on mythology. It's ambitiously expansive in its warmth, its humour, its insightfulness on a wider range of human experience and is more generously optimistic in its outlook. That's a lot to take in and consider, but it would be a mistake to emphasise the comedy and the romance to the exclusion of the opera's undercurrents of melancholy towards change and ...well, threats from 'outside'. I don't think Davids ignores this as much chooses to focus on the colour and setting and let Wagner's music fill in the rest. Wagner's miraculous music is more than capable of providing that with Daniele Gatti in the pit and a strong cast assembled for this production, but the production design and stage choreography does feel like a bit of a mess and distract from engaging with any deeper meaning in the work.

The best thing I can say about the first Act of the new Bayreuth Meistersinger is that it lays out the original premise of the opera clearly. It's not without a distinctive look and feel of its own with its long staircase up to St Catherine's Church in Nuremberg for the opening scene, the set revolving to a kind of lecture theatre setting for the marking of Walther von Stolzing’s first efforts at becoming a mastersinger. The street scenes for Act II look bewilderingly 'normal' as well, or not so much normal as picture book Nuremberg, an idealised non-period specific operatic setting the looks to tradition but modernises it to look bright and colourful. The buildings all look like the Keramikhäuser you find in German Christmas markets, or since this has a wooden appearance, more like a Christmas manger scene which kind of jars, in my mind anyway, with this being Midsummer's Eve.

The first half of Act II however is at least beautifully played, much more sensitively performed than Act I, but probably only because Wagner scored it with great warmth, nostalgia and human insight. Not so much in the acting, which is all broad gestures turning into slapstick inevitably by the end of the second Act. The director really hasn't got a handle on the nature of the people and the relationships between them as Wagner depicts them, or at least I never felt like these were real people with inner lives. It feels superficial, but Wagner's music soars under Daniele Gatti and has real heart and emotion behind it. It's not enough to carry the latter part of this act, and Beckmesser's wooing of Lena just feels agonising. It's surely impossible for this scene to be anything less than entertaining, but here it just drags with a lack of any kind of imagination or insight. The closing choral scene is chaotic, as it is supposed to be, but really shouldn't be this much of a mess.

Hans Sachs' workshop at the start of Act III brings a welcome change of tone; the spare set, the simplicity of the widower's home a wooden low wall circle, the loneliness of it all working with the melancholic tone. Georg Zeppenfeld can do deep melancholy well (not so great with humour), but his gestures remain broad. He is perhaps not everyone's ideal Hans Sachs, but his singing nonetheless carries the beauty and intent of this role in this scene. For me, these scenes with Eva and with Walther are the heart and soul of the work: they are filled with meaning, with the experience of life, looking back and looking forward and trying to come to terms with it all. Musically it's a marvel, the crowning achievement of Wagner's longstanding efforts to capture the essence of the German spirit through art, mythology and storytelling, but here without the usual grandiosity. He even quotes Tristan und Isolde (composed during the writing of Meistersinger), but instead of the despair of King Marke, Wagner's Sachs is inspired by or comforted by the optimism of youth and the new spirit of love in Stolzing, Eva, David and Lena. These scenes are beautiful and the best part of this new production at Bayreuth, as it ties in well with the director's approach and vision for the opera as a whole.

Of course it's nothing without the quality of the Prize song to prove it, and Michael Spyres brings out the full beauty of his Liebestraum. If Zeppenfeld's reactions of amazement and wonder at the knight's performance look a little exaggerated, you can nonetheless well understand it when you hear Spyres sing it like this. Although the poetry strikes me as rather flowery - literally - it still casts a spell of enchantment that is irresistible. It has to be believed that this song is near miraculous and Wagner composed it to have just that impact, more beautiful here in its moment of spontaneous creation than in the unnecessary spectacle of the final act performance - which of course Walther tries his best to reject. It can be just as wonderful at the conclusion, but it's not here and it's not because Walther and Eva do actually reject the nationalistic sentiments expressed by Sachs, but there are other issues with the staging of the scene that undermine it somewhat. Thankfully we have this 'demo' version before it becomes 'overproduced'.

The final scene suits the occasion to an extent, even if it is not particularly tasteful. The scene is set for a song contest in the style of Search for a Star, a regional Nuremberg heat of 'Germany’s Got Talent' or whatever the latest TV show incarnation of X-Factor is currently popular. It is indeed a popular scene involving the whole community so it is not inappropriate, even with a huge colourful inflatable cow canopy and bales of hay. Within that the concluding scenes plays out in a fine if unexceptional manner and it's interesting that the decision to reject being the new idol of holy German Art is instigated or supported by Eva who whisks Walther off to seek live the lives they want to live.

For all my misgivings about the production, the scene was a moving one and, aside from the mixed response to the production team at the curtain call, the premiere performance of the new production appears to have been appreciated by the Bayreuth audience. I can't say it doesn't meet the intent of the work and do it justice, just that it felt unadventurous in not really interrogating the work, meaning we had some very dull passages, particularly in the first Act.

Lifeless scenes in the first half aside, musically and in terms of the singing performances this was indeed a very enjoyable production that took on a momentum of its own and made this just about a worthwhile experience. Aside from the capable performance of Georg Zeppenfeld and Michael Spyres' wonderfully sung Walter von Stolzing, the other performances all had much to admire. Michael Nagy sang well as Beckmesser, but deserved better than the role being reduced to little more than a sidekick for comic slapstick. Christina Nilsson's role debut as Eva was excellent. If she seemed occasionally overawed, that could also be attributed to her character's position in the work. She led the quintet in Act III beautifully. Matthias Stier made a strong impression as David and the reliable Christa Mayer was a fine Magdalena. Jongmin Park was a steadfast Pogner, and indeed all the Mastersinger roles (in their tea cosy helmets) were well defined and sung. The lightness of touch and warmth that Matthias Davids was aiming to achieve was certainly there in Daniele Gatti's conducting of the warm, luscious score, but somehow it never seemed to gel with any sense of genuine warmth and humanity reflected on the stage.

External links: BR-Klassik, Bayreuther Festspiele