Schreker - Der ferne Klang (Stockholm, 2019)

Franz Schreker - Der ferne Klang

Royal Swedish Opera, 2019

Stefan Blunier, Christof Loy, Agneta Eichenholz, Daniel Johansson, Johan Rydh, Miriam Treichl, Andreas Lundmark, Jeremy Carpenter, Lars Arvidson, Vivianne Holmberg, Marie-Louise Granström, Madeleine Barringer, Ola Eliasson, Klas Hedlund, Daniel Ohlmann

OperaVision - October 2019

Franz Schreker's first breakthrough opera Der ferne Klang in 1912, like much of the composer's work that followed, has the same sense of a flawed utopian ideal that is common in the composer's later "decadent" works like Die Gezeichneten and Irrelohe. It has something in common then with other post-Wagnerian German and Austrian composers of the early twentieth century (most obviously Korngold's Die Tote Stadt or Das Wunder der Heliane) whose work would later be classified by the Nazi's as "Entartete", "degenerate" because of their Jewish connections.

Like those other works by such composers at the turn of the century the influence of Wagner is inescapable, and Der ferne Klang is very much seeped in Wagnerian romanticism both musically and thematically. If it perhaps doesn't have the same sense of purpose or philosophical rigour of Wagner's best work - few do - it is however considerably more than a pale copy or a mere fantasy aligned to the master's style, and in its own way Schreker's works tap into the concerns of their time at the beginning of the 20th century in the desire to find or create a better world.

Certainly the comparisons with Tannhäuser are immediately obvious in the situation of Fritz, a heroic artist with a pure vision, a composer who sets off on a self-imposed pilgrimage searching for "a distant sound", the otherworldly music of harps that he must pursue: "A noble ambition floats before my eyes and I must be free!". To do this means sacrificing his love for Grete, his obsession with the distant sound causing him to fail to recognise the beauty he already has before him in the young woman's love, until of course it is too late.

While Fritz is off in pursuit his elusive ideal the main part of Der ferne Klang is concerned with the fate of Grete. Left in an unhappy family situation, her drunken father Graumann prepared to gamble her away in a game to the landlord of the drinking den to whom he is heavily in debt, she runs away to try and find Fritz. Along the way she falls into the seductive clutches of a glamorous lady and ends up a high class prostitute in a nightclub on an island in Venice where she is adored by the clientele, and in particular pursued by the Count.

To settle matters Greta promises to marry whoever can tell/sing the best story, meaning that Act II of the opera even has its own version of Tannhäuser's singing contest in Wartburg. Rather than it being an occasion to seek to find ennobling truths and dispel false artistry based on received wisdom rather than hard-won experience and innovative ideas, you get the impression that Schreker uses this occasion more as an opportunity to provide a bit of musical variety, colour and cabaret.

In reality however the Count's relentless pursuit of Greta is in a way a similar pursuit for a 'ferne Klang', one that differs from Fritz's vision in that it has a predetermined outcome - winning Greta - and thus is less pure than Fritz's noble and idealistic journey into unknown realms. In a way then the singing contest does serve a similar purpose to that of the one in Tannhäuser. In Der ferne Klang however the nobility of that outcome is less sure, the dream of a paradise uncertain or maybe even an impossible ideal. Does that make striving for truth any less worthy even if it doesn't reveal what we hope it will?

That conclusion, which comes in Act III, is where Christof Loy has to really do the work in this production for the Swedish National Opera. Up until then it all seems a little lacking in this director's usual modern touches and ideas, keeping to a period setting of classical elegance. As ever, Loy is just seeking to reflect what is there in the music, matching the settings and drama to the lush orchestration of Schreker's score. Since Act III opens with a long musical interlude, Loy has more room here to develop and contrast and blend the reality with the dreams.

And since Schreker also provides the opportunity by setting Act III backstage after the performance of Fritz's great masterpiece, Loy takes advantage of exploring how dreams and reality can be brought together in art, in opera. His re-encounter with Grete brings Fritz great disappointment when he is made aware of her degrading circumstances and his renouncement of her at the end of Act II inspires him to the discovery of the 'far off sound' he has been looking for. Since his opera is considered a failure however, there's some ambiguity around whether life informs great art or whether art is at best only a flawed shadow of life. The chances are that, like Fritz, the only way we can judge whether we've taken the right path and grasped what is important is when it's too late to change anything.

If it doesn't make any grand gestures then or bring about any great revelations, Loy's direction very much explores and enhances the value of Schreker's Der ferne Klang. The same can be said very much for Stefan Blunier's conducting of the Swedish National Orchestra which revels in the lush beauty of Schreker's wonderful flowing orchestration. Like Richard Strauss, there's also considerable beauty and challenges in the vocal writing but when it's done right, as it is here with Agneta Eichenholz's Grete and Daniel Johansson's Fritz, both soaring in their self-delusion, shattered in their clash with reality - the effect is ravishing. How wonderful that the Swedish National Opera treat this beautiful neglected work so well.

Links: OperaVision, Swedish National Opera

Neuwirth - Orlando (Vienna, 2019)

Olga Neuwirth - Orlando

Wiener Staatsoper, 2019

Matthias Pintscher, Polly Graham, Kate Lindsey, Anna Clementi, Eric Jurenas, Constance Hauman, Agneta Eichenholz, Leigh Melrose, Justin Vivian Bond

Staatsoper Live - 18 December 2019

The subject and content of Olga Neuwirth's new opera Orlando is very much related to the fact that she is the first woman composer not only to write an opera for the Vienna State Opera, but is the first woman composer to ever even have an opera performed there. Neuwirth's choice of Virginia Woolf's influential and highly regarded 1928 novel 'Orlando', which follows the course of a young nobleman who lives through the political changes of the centuries, experiencing it from the viewpoint of a man and then changing sex to become a woman, is clearly a pointed commentary on this fact.

Following in the footsteps of Luigi Nono, a composer that she worked with as an assistant, Austrian born Neuwirth is likewise viewed as a 'political' composer, but rather than just seek to make a well-meaning gesture against the injustice of gender inequality in the world of opera, or even take the route of a superficial commentary on current affairs in the world today, in Orlando Neuwirth extends on Woolf's vision to seek to address a deeper problem that could be seen as having an underlying impact on how the nature of the world we live continually changes, but those changes have been shaped by gender inequality throughout the ages, women reduced to a footnote in history, if considered at all.

It's also notable, if purely coincidental, that the period covered in Orlando aligns very closely with the history of opera, which has also evolved and changed over the years. Even baroque opera however has until relatively recently also been a rarity at the Vienna State opera - a 50 year gap only broken in 2011 coincidentally (isn't it strange how much that word comes up, you'd almost think it telling) with a production of Handel's Alcina, a tale of another Orlando - so the history of change in opera is perhaps not something that many of the more conservative element of the audience in Vienna would recognise. I don't think Olga Neuwirth is going to convince them with her Orlando.

Being a well-educated man from a noble family in 1598, Orlando is well placed to be destined for greatness. He determines to be a poet and a great writer, but although he wins the favour of Queen Elizabeth, his ambitious work 'The Oak Tree' doesn't win favour with critics like Mr Greene. Disappointed in love, when he is betrayed by Sasha, a Russian princess, jaded by the politics of the land and war, Orlando falls into a deep coma and reawakens as a woman in a new age. Her experiences as a woman however bring her to recognise the fact that history is made by men and certainly written by them, meaning much the same thing.

Women don't get a whole lot of a look in and Orlando, now a woman, expected to do little more than make tea and marry, finds it unfair that someone can be rejected solely on the basis of the sex they were born into. Worse comes in the Victorian era, where Orlando encounters women and young girls who are victims of sexual abuse and destined for a life of abject misery. She decides to write and record their experiences from the perspective of woman, but finding a publisher continues to prove elusive, even in the age of eBook publishing.

What is interesting, and perhaps something I failed to appreciate in Woolf or in Sally Potter's filmed version of 'Orlando', is that living now in an era where gender reassignment and gender fluidity is relatively common (if not yet wholly accepted and viewed with suspicion in some quarters), it's now possible to see that Woolf was very much ahead of the game in terms of questions of sexual politics. This of course has a more contemporary application later in Neuwirth's updating of 'Orlando' beyond Woolf's time of 1928 up to the present day, Neuwirth thereby highlighting for a modern audiences how society and attitudes change over time. Significantly however, while that change is brought clearly to the forefront, it also makes evident just how far behind attitudes remain in relation to gender inequality.

It's inevitably a huge task to get all that across in a three hour opera and avoid sounding preachy, particularly when Neuwirth's musical approach to the subject is just as complex and all-encompassing, and modernist and dissonant in the most difficult way for an audience to engage with. Neuwirth doesn't entirely succeed in terms of making the case persuasive from the musical viewpoint, embracing early Tudor music, references to Purcell, religious choral pieces with live electronic layering and use of unconventional instruments in the total opera manner of Stockhausen with its spiritual leanings or Nono's direct political engagement, the conclusion featuring a cabaret band and a transgender singer - Orlando's child - does tend to push towards preachiness.

While it can be difficult to listen to - although I'm certain that it would come across with more detail and much more effectively in a live context rather than via the Wiener Staatsoper's streaming service - it's not hard to appreciate what Neuwirth is trying to do and admire how Matthias Pintscher conducts it, but over an extended period it does head towards sensory overload and cacophony. Certainly for the purposes of how it relates to and reflects the subject of embracing change and diversity however it's essential to employ the richness of musical options open to a composer. It's music that, like Orlando, recognises no distinction between past and present, is male and female all rolled into one, pushing beyond restrictive boundaries of convention.

The musical complexity and what it attempts to bring out only makes the challenges of mixing and blending all the historical scene changes even more difficult for director Polly Graham. Forced into a more linear narrative approach, with the passing years displayed in the background, the production design is perhaps a little more theatrically conventional in how it meets those challenges of keeping up, using moving screens and projections, but unless you employ La Fura dels Baus or Stefan Herheim, it would be near impossible to visually match the textural richness of the music, much less add another level of complexity to the work that in an ideal world the theatrical element should equally contribute.

Neuwirth and co-librettist Catherine Filloux succeed to a large extend in their aims of making Orlando relevant to the modern age, addressing the legacy of the male-dominated, war-hawking, money-making agenda that suppresses any possibility of true change in the world, raising again the spectre of fascism. As persuasive as the central performance of Kate Lindsey's Orlando is to standing up against the ways of the past, whether Neuwirth's Orlando aligned with and updating Virginia Woolf's vision makes an equal or greater historical impression seems unlikely, but it's certainly of the moment, another marker along the way to show that we've still a long way to go.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home

Gluck - Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe

Theater Basel

Anu Tali, Tobias Kratzer, Freiburger Barockorchester, Tomasz Zagorski, David DQ Lee, Agneta Eichenholz, Solenn’ Lananant-Linke, Maya Boog, Christopher Bolduc

Basel, Switzerland - 24 June 2011

Gluck’s Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe (Telemachus, or Circe’s Island, 1765) comes at an interesting point in the composer’s career that has historical significance as well as great musical interest for its place in the opera repertoire. Written during his Italian period, while the composer was still forming his ideas for the reform of opera, Telemaco (dramma per musica in two acts) sits between two important operas (Orfeo ed Eurydice and Alceste) that – in their later French revisions at least – would transform opera, taking it away from empty stylisations and displays of vocal virtuosity towards a more dramatic form of opera as we know it today. The groundwork towards this reform can already be clearly seen in the lesser-known Telemaco.

Even though it still adheres largely to the opera seria form, with drama played out in semi-recitative and fluid continuo (with no harpsichord), the traditional longer arias express the emotions felt with some repetition, but there is nonetheless a restrained simplicity to the arrangements and a clear focus on the drama, with no unnecessary da capo adornments. Most of all however, there is a sense in Telemaco of the wonderful humanism that Gluck is able to find in the human drama unfolding in this particular episode of Homer’s Odyssey and in how he brings it out through the music with a naturalness and fluidity. That’s wonderfully apparent in the playing of the Freiburger Barockorchester conducted by Anu Tali (a rarity seeing a female conductor in the pit) at this production for the Theatre Basel in Switzerland.

Tobias Kratzer’s staging for this production boldly went for a few modernising reforms of its own, seeing Odysseus as a WWII fighter pilot who has been brought down and is now held captive with his crew by Circe on a tropical Pacific island. The opening scene where Penelope receives and rejects her suitors in a late 1940s drawing room in Ithaca, Odysseus having been missing for six years, is then violently transformed into a jungle, vines bursting through the walls as Telemachus vows to go in search of his father and bring him home. Played as a dual role, Penelope quick-changes into Circe, the madame of an Asian brothel, Penelope’s ladies in waiting dropping their knitting and stripping down to sirens in slips that hold Odysseus and his men in their power.

Quite what the intentions were in the modernisation, in closely relating the two worlds and in the division of Penelope/Circe is difficult to judge (this is a very rare opera and I can find no recording of it in existence, or even an English synopsis of the original libretto – although the subject is a familiar mythological one, done many times in opera), but it certainly creates an interesting contrast to consider. What is less in doubt however is the ability of the music and the singing to draw the human drama out of the story.

As Odysseus, Tomasz Zagorski was a strong and commanding tenor, with clear Italian diction. In the alto-castrato role of Telemachus, Canadian countertenor David DQ Lee came into form wonderfully in Act II during his vision of the death of Penelope, bringing out the full extent of the nature of his character and his conflicted feelings. Agneta Eichenholz was a little inconsistent as Penelope and Circe, but the dual-role is clearly a challenging one. The heart of the opera however would seem to lie in the character of Asteria and in her relationship with Telemachus. It’s in her transformation from a nymph through her love for the son of Odysseus, and coming to be recognised as a sister by Merione that the most powerful and human moments are expressed in the opera, and Maya Boog captured that wonderfully, particularly in her heartbreaking Act II aria, but it was also evident in the fine ensemble work of the cast and the chorus as a whole.

Composed as a commission for the Hapsburg monarch and Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II and his wife Maria Josepha of Bavaria, who had just come to power after the reign of his mother Maria Teresa and attempt to usher in modernising reforms, there are evidently parallels and guiding principles brought out in Gluck’s Telemaco (much in the way Mozart opera seria La Clemenza di Tito was written for Leopold II in 1791), but regardless of the setting in antiquity, in the time of Joseph II, or in post-WWII, the qualities and strengths of this rare opera are timeless and still relevant, as is Gluck’s prototypic al vision of the modern dramatic opera.