Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così fan tutte
Royal Opera House, 2016
Semyon
Bychkov, Jan Philipp Gloger, Corinne Winters, Angela Brower, Daniel
Behle, Alessio Arduini, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Sabina Puértolas
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Purely
in terms of the musical and singing performances, the Royal Opera
House's 2016 production of Così fan tutte is reasonably good, if not
quite exciting or revelatory. Semyon Bychkov conducts an elegant
account of the work, but it doesn't particularly fizz with those
energised moments of Mozartian brilliance. The singing performances are
fresh, bright and vibrant, but don't seem to be able to carry the
weightier considerations that are in the opera either. Jan Philipp Gloger's direction has an interesting concept that actually sets out to
bridge that gap rather well, providing plenty of visual interest in the
sets and situations, but somehow it still never quite coheres the way
you might like it.
Making Don Alfonso a theatre director
does take the work into a meta-theatrical direction, the opera even
opening with the director and the cast of his latest work taking their
bows at the start of this performance during the overture. The idea is
not just to be clever, but to consider the meaning of Mozart and
Da Ponte's opera in the context of art and artifice. It's not
real-life, it's an opera. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have a
serious point to make, but it can do it through music, theatre and,
although it might seem like a contradiction, and is less commonly seen
these days in this opera, it can be serious through comedy. As a
theatre director then, Don Alfonso uses a number of theatrical
situations to put love to the test and illustrate his point about
fidelity and constancy to the two unrealistically idealistic young
couples.
The Royal Opera House production tries to
address the issues of love and fidelity in the opera in a lighter and
more playful fashion without having to resort to that darker view of
male and female relationships and middle-class ideals that you will find
in some other productions (Michael Haneke and Christophe Honoré). It's true that some of the
ideas expressed in the opera might be considered rather out of step
with modern attitudes towards gender politics and political correctness,
but Mozart and Da Ponte's comedy is actually just as challenging of
prevailing attitudes. One need only look at their other two
collaborations to realise that the same principles are applied to Così
fan tutte. The theatricality and forced romanticism of the situations
in Gloger's production highlight the fact that Mozart and Da Ponte are
satirising such attitudes, regarding the notion of constancy and
fidelity as nothing more than an artificial bourgeois construct that
prevents us from following the true dictates of the human heart.
And
it's true. Don Alfonso and his rather more practical minded
co-conspirator from the serving classes Despina are actually correct.
Not so much in the idea that it's women who are inconstant (it's taken
for granted that men are fickle), but rather what Così fan tutte shows
us is that anyone can fall in love, the human heart can be easily swayed
and circumstances (or fate if you like) all have a part to play. It's
not about fidelity, it's about human nature, and when it comes to
exploring the wonder and the mysterious ways of the human heart, there's
no-one like Mozart for showing its infinite variety and capacity for
love. It might not always work out how we might like it, but in
contrast to the cynicism that you can find in some modern productions,
Mozart's music actually shows us that rather than leading to
disillusionment, he considers this to be something wonderful and
something to be celebrated.
Gloger's production then
captures both the artifice of romantic ideals where we don disguises and
play roles, but in each of the theatrical settings it also shows the
wonderful variety of circumstances in which love can work its magic and
catch us unawares, breaking down any preconceived ideals. It's a
production that is perfectly in tune with the playfulness of the idea
and the execution of the original, matching its cleverness, its richness
of mood and character. Mozart and Da Ponte tell us to keep an open
mind, and the same thing can be applied to this production. Every time
you come to a Mozart opera, you can experience and discover something
new about this wonderful work, and this one actually extends on some of
its themes rather brilliantly, if you have an open mind and no
preconceptions.
In execution however, it somehow doesn't
quite come together the way it should. It's perhaps the difficulty of
maintaining all those levels and trying to provide something for
everyone; trying to retain some amount of the familiar with a few new
ideas to challenge them. It's also down to the nature of the work
itself, which demands young, fresh singers, but expects them to have the
experience to maintain those various levels of superficiality and
sophistication. Corinne Winters, Angela Brower, Daniel Behle and Alessio Arduini however give engaging individual performances of equal
weight that permits them to interact well as a team. Sabina Puértolas is a lively irreverent Despina, and Johannes Martin Kränzle perfect as a
generous rather than a cynical Don Alfonso.
The
disconnect however appears to be more in the musical performance. Semyon Bychkov keeps the tone deceptively light, and it's this tone that
dominates without either connecting meaningfully or contrasting with
what is going on up on the stage. While Gloger's sets carry the sense of
game play and role play, each of the 'actors' playing their allotted
roles, it all feels a little detached and doesn't find a way to carry
through to the ambiguous feelings that linger with the revelations made
at a very confused resolution. There's an effort made to end on a
wistful note, but you never get the sense that there is anything serious
at stake here and no one really gets hurt. The ambiguity about Così
however is what keeps it fresh and keeps you thinking, and this
production does give you plenty to think about.
The
Blu-ray presentation of the production also gives it a new lease of
life, particularly in the High Resolution audio mixes of the musical
performance. The extras on the BD are scant, but the introduction
covers the all you need to know about the director's intentions for the
concept, the characters and the nature of the work itself.
Links: Royal Opera House YouTube
Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème
L’Opéra National de Paris, 2017
Gustavo Dudamel, Claus Guth, Nicole Car, Aida Garifullina, Atalla Ayan, Artur Rucinski, Alessio Arduini, Roberto Tagliavini, Marc Labonnette, Antonel Boldan, Bernard Arrieta, Jain-Hong Zhao, Fernando Velasquez
Culturebox - 12 December 2017
No, no matter how much you try to rationalise it, there could surely be no justification for director Claus Guth reinventing La Bohème as a science-fiction space adventure. As strange as Guth's productions can often be, this one for the Paris Opera was always going to be a bit of a stretch. But you've got to admire Guth's nerve for even attempting something like this at La Bastille, where a large conservative element in the audience don't usually take kindly to such directorial indulgences. I couldn't wait to see what Guth did with this, even if failure and the disapprobation of the Paris audience was likely to be the outcome of such a conceit.
As outrageous as the idea might seem and as outlandish as it indeed looks seeing La Bohème take place on a space station crash-landing on a distant moon, Guth's approach to making it fit actually isn't all that surprising. It's one step removed from 'it was all a dream' brought on by bereavement and deprivation leading to mental breakdown (as Stefan Herheim also basically proposed in his reverse deconstructed Oslo production), and in a futuristic space context that kind of idea tends to play out like Solaris (which has already been adopted to opera in recent years by Detlev Glanert and Dai Fujikura), a work which leaves room for some in-depth consideration of the nature of human relationships.
La Bohème then actually has some suitability for this kind of feverish nightmare outlook. The forced comedy of impoverished artists facing starvation projecting their creative imaginations towards surreal displays can be seen as a distraction from the reality of their circumstances. The 'pretend' feast and acquiring of riches in Act I then results in the surrealism of fantasies of dining at Café Momus and in a parade of life that surrounds the toy seller Parpignol. The charade becomes harder to maintain as the realities hit home on Act III, and in Act IV the playing becomes a grim dance of death.
In such a creative mindset, Marcello's painting of the Red Sea in Act I could just as easily be a vision of the Red Planet, couldn't it? Well, in Guth's production it literally is the view outside the window that faces a small team of astronauts whose ship has broken down, but that's about the only easy transition in the production between a garret in fin de siècle Paris and the cabin of a rocket ship. Elsewhere, like Rodolfo, you're going to have to be a bit imaginative in finding any convincing connection or rationale for the production's extraterrestrial setting, but Guth tries to give us one based on Henry Murger's original stories being viewed by the protagonists as older people reflecting on youth and mortality ...only in an outer space setting evidently.
The captain's log, rolled out on a screen, tells us that the four-man team's mission has gone off course 136 days into their space voyage; their reactors are down, resources are almost exhausted and time is running out for the crew. In an effort to keep their spirits up they let their imaginations run free on an idealised version of a long gone past. Seen largely from the perspective of Rodolfo's disintegrating grasp on reality, it's no surprise that suspended in a state between sleep and waking delirium his mind returns to happier times and he is haunted Solaris Hari-like by visions of his lost love Mimi.
It's absolute nonsense - quite literally, of course, since we are perceiving events through a mind on the edge of complete breakdown. But at the same time that doesn't add or bring anything new to the state of mind of La Bohème's characters living on the margins of society, or to the nature of the relationships of love, friendship and camaraderie that develop between them in their straitened circumstances. Worse, Guth's transposition of it onto another planet in some science-fiction future runs the risk of actually distracting from the sentiments of the work; which is just wrong, even if you think that La Bohème is a sentimental work (which I don't).
The attempt to sustain the idea of course just becomes more and more ludicrous the longer it goes on. By Act III, the pilots have been driven to make a forced landing on a barren planet or moon, and the inevitability of their fate lost in the void of space - and a lack of oxygen to the brain - just pushes their delusions further into absurdity. Yes, you can probably make a connection between Rodolfo in a space suit cut off emotionally from a Mimi who contorts and cavorts in a red dress on an airless dusty moonscape - although you're more likely to think it's a wonder she's only coughing - but you would get that anyway from a traditional production without the added distraction.
Act IV is increasingly desperate, and I don't just mean for Rodolfo. With Schaunard and Colline already dead, their suits running out of air, Rodolfo starts to imagine himself and Marcello as part of some kind of cabaret act on the moon, complete with glittering strip curtain backdrop. Parpignol is still cavorting around as a mime artist (please!), not for the first time being presented as a kind of death-like master-of-ceremonies figure (cf. Herheim again). Full marks to Claus Guth for this effort at provocation - I sometimes feel the Paris audience deserve such baiting - but I don't think La Bohème deserves it.
I also felt curiously unmoved by Gustavo Dudamel's conducting of the score, which highlighted the delicacy of the composition but lacked any real feeling for the work. It floated along pleasantly enough, but never made any emotional connection with the drama, although it's hard to tell how much of that is down to the failings of the stage direction. The singing too felt merely adequate for the most part, Atalla Ayan's Rodolfo a little harsh-sounding and imprecise, but Nicole Car's Mimi certainly stood out, and Aida Garifullina was a sparkling Musetta - not bad for figments of Rodolfo's imagination and memory. I doubt that Guth's space-age production of La Bohème will be considered as imaginative or memorable, but it's unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry.
Links: L’Opéra National de Paris, Culturebox
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così fan tutte
Royal Opera House, 2016
Semyon Bychkov, Jan Philipp Gloger, Corinne Winters, Angela Brower, Daniel Behle, Alessio Arduini, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Sabina Puértolas
Cinema Season Live - 17 October 2016
Così fan tutte has never quite been treated with the same love and affection that is given to Mozart's other two collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte, Le Nozze di Figaro or Don Giovanni. Perhaps it's because Così fan tutte is more overtly a comedy, but there are comic elements in all three operas. Perhaps the same weight of insight into human feelings and behaviour just isn't there or just gets lost amidst the farce, but that depends very much on the choices made in direction. In recent years for example, Michael Haneke and Christophe Honoré - both filmmakers - have explored the very dark side of human behaviour in Così fan tutte to a largely successful degree.
Perhaps all Haneke and Honoré really did with Così fan tutte was find a way to connect the audience to an emotional reality within the opera that the comic side doesn't achieve quite so well, but that raises the question about whether or not this betrays the true intent of the work. Like Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni all sides of human behaviour are explored, and there are also dark and disturbing aspects that are there to be drawn upon in Così fan tutte. The answer would seen to lie in achieving a human balance between the comedy and the darkness and, if nothing else, this search to reveal the true worth of Mozart in Così fan tutte means that the work is always a fascinating challenge.
Jan Philipp Gloger's production for the Royal Opera House takes the challenge head-on by recognising that, perhaps even more than the other two Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, art and artifice are at the heart of Così fan tutte and part of its very nature. Even if it's entirely in the spirit of the work, placing the emphasis on the artifice in the opera with an openly theatrical presentation is however a risky gamble as it tends to place even more distance between the situation and the truth behind it. The real test of whether the work can reveal its deeper human predicament lies more with the performers here, but despite truly great performances from an impressive young cast, the production does seem to work against them.
By using and emphasising theatrical devices as the basis for the production, Jan Philipp Gloger adheres to the comic principles that are at the heart of the work, and the means by which Mozart and Da Ponte make their case. The subtitle of Così fan tutte - A School for Lovers - tells you of this intent. The plot of the opera, like the opera itself, relies on the artifice of art to get its message across. Art is a means of arriving at a truth about inner sentiments that outside 'realism' might not be capable of reaching. Just as Mozart's music is a means of expressing those feelings in relation to love and fidelity in Così fan tutte, so too the use of theatre has the power to invent situations that put those feelings to the test.
The lesson that Don Alfonso has to impart to his students Ferrando and Guglielmo is not just that all women are by nature inconstant and unfaithful in their love, but rather that love is not some romantic ideal that we can choose to bend to our will. The heart has no master. The meaning and intent of this lesson is a serious one, but presenting it as a comedy does pose some problems that often tend to overshadow the truth of the work. Rather than play it straight with the two men donning stupid disguises as moustachioed Albanians that would fool no-one, there has to be some sort of complicity in going along with the game on the part of both men and their partners, Fiordiligi and Dorabella. It has to be seen as a role-play on some level that delivers the truth.
Gloger's idea of having Don Alfonso as a theatre director then has considerable merit, not least for the conceit of the two men dressing up and behaving out of character as they try and woo their respective fiancées into being unfaithful. As the theatrical sets and situations are levered into place, it is however clearly a high-level concept and not one could bear any realistic scrutiny. Suspension of disbelief is necessary, but at some level surely we must all realise when we go to the theatre or the opera that we are never watching realism on the stage, but just people acting. But acting for a good reason, which is to get to a deeper truth, and, let's not forget, to entertain. This production entertains and impresses and it even gets the all-important human message across through its art, but it does still feel a little too artificial.
It's through no fault of the singing or the musical performance. On every level this is an outstanding performance. While the characters are by no means interchangeable (other than for the necessities of the plot evidently), I often find that it's harder work to distinguish or perhaps care enough to consider what are the defining characteristics of the four main characters. They might not be as multifaceted and complex individuals as those in The Marriage of Figaro, but they can still have depth and personality. Genuine attention to the music and the arias show that this is the case and if it doesn't come across it not as much an issue with Mozart and Da Ponte's depiction but more likely with the direction or the singer's ability to bring something to their role. There is no issue at all with the singers here in the Royal Opera House production, but perhaps the direction doesn't do enough to highlight the contrasts and differences.
As far as singing and characterisation go the performances however are outstanding. Corinne Winters, Angela Brower, Daniel Behle and Alessio Arduini are just delightful as the confused lovers, each of them bearing equal weight, each of them meeting the challenges of the work, all of them bringing considerable youthful personality and sympathy to the roles in their individual arias, in their duets and ensembles. It's marvellous to see such a team interacting, working with each other in a way that illustrates all the points of the music and the drama. Sabina Puértolas too is one of the best Despinas I have seen, her singing performance impressive, bringing a lively fun personality and a sense of pleasure at mixing things up on the stage. The wonderfully versatile Johannes Martin Kränzle is comparatively rather restrained as Don Alfonso, but dressed in period costume as the 'director' (as Lorenzo da Ponte?), it was hard to really grasp his real nature here.
Musically too, there's a good performance here from the orchestra under Semyon Bychkov that keeps the tone deceptively light, but it's this tone that dominates without either connecting meaningfully or contrasting with what is going on up on the stage. While Gloger's sets carry the sense of game play and role play, each of the 'actors' playing their allotted roles, it all feels a little detached and doesn't find a way to carry through to the ambiguous feelings that linger with the revelations made at a very confused resolution. There's an effort made to end on a wistful note, but you never get the sense that there is anything serious at stake here and no one really gets hurt, which, for all the criticisms you could make about it, is not something you could say about Christophe Honoré's devastating conclusion in his production for Aix-en-Provence and Edinburgh.
Links: Royal Opera House
Gaetano Donizetti - Don Pasquale
Wiener Staatsoper, 2015
Jesús López-Cobos, Irina Brook, Michele Pertusi, Juan Diego Flórez, Alessio Arduini, Valentina Nafornita
Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 8 May 2015
There's really only one important factor to take into account when it comes to Don Pasquale - the comedy. I'm not saying that there aren't musical qualities to admire in Donizetti's score, but if it doesn't entertain an audience, make you smile and laugh on one or two occasions, there's not a lot of point to it. No amount of virtuoso playing and singing or clever concept is going to make up for that. The performance and the entertainment however evidently go hand in hand, the singing needs to be bright and effortless, carrying you along on the verve of Donizetti's delightful, pacy score.
The Vienna State Opera's new production might not appear to offer any new spin on the work, but it succeeds wonderfully because they get the essentials right. You can tell that straight off from a look at the cast sheet. Mostly. Michele Pertusi is Don Pasquale, Juan Diego Flórez is Ernesto and Valentina Nafornita - the only unknown element for me here - is Norina. Pertusi is a fine bass, but it's not a voice that is suitable for every Italian role. A week after this performance, he sang the role of Zaccharia in Nabucco competently, but with little of strength and dramatic character that is needed for a Verdi bass. Pertusi is much more at home in bel canto and, if this performance is anything to go by, in comic roles as well.
Michele Pertusi's Don Pasquale is subtle and not overacted. He doesn't look 70 perhaps, or look as seedy as you might expect a man of his age and position to be in his eagerness to marry a virginal, innocent, young convent girl, but in Donizetti's world, you need to have some measure of sympathy for the old fool otherwise it's just not funny. Pertusi gives this Pasquale some character, neither bumbling fool nor tyrant - just an old man with money and weaknesses, one of which is beautiful women. And who can blame him for that? There's a lightness of touch to the performance and good comic timing and Don Pasquale is an opera where timing and interaction are critical.
Juan Diego Flórez is still about as good as it gets in the bel canto romantic tenor role. He has claimed that his voice is darkening and that he might not always play roles like this in the future, but there's no sign of any weakness or change in his voice here. Acting is not a speciality of Flórez, but he always has energy and flair in his performance, never looks like he is just walking through a role, even if he makes challenging singing roles look effortless. There's room to make Ernesto a little more rounded in character, but Flórez is content to let him remain the naive romantic and derive humour from that alone. When you can sing like this like Donizetti intended, there's not really any need to change anything.
The two male leads are wonderfully cast, and so too is Alessio Arduini as Malatesta. Without underestimating his importance to the dynamic of the opera - or indeed the kind of virtuosity that is required to sing a rapid-fire duet with Pasquale - Malatesta is less of a star role and more of a motor that keeps it all going. It's all about the interaction and the timing, as it is in much of Don Pasquale, and indeed that duet is a fine example of him winding up the pace and tension that sets Don Pasquale off on his final spin. Arduini even brings a little more verve to the role than you often find, but without letting his character dominate or take away from the other important starring roles.
None of which perhaps is more important than Norina. It's one of those roles that can be a dream or a nightmare, a glamorous role that offers great dynamic range for a soprano to show her abilities as an actress but it can be hugely challenging to sing. She has to play the innocent girl just out of a convent and show that she is playing it, but be convincing at the same time. She also has to be a real tyrant, throwing her weight around, but at the same time feeling a little guilty about the deception they are pulling on a vulnerable old man. Aside from those broad comic contrasts, you'd also like it - particularly in more enlightened times - if Norina has some character and a mind of her own. Not asking for much then from a soprano.
I haven't come across Valentina Nafornita before, and that would have been my only question-mark when looking at the cast list for this new 2015 production of Don Pasquale at the Wiener Staatsoper. Nafornita surpasses all expectations one might have for this role. Like Malatesta, her sidekick, she's a motor, constantly winding up and driving the action onwards, providing plenty of conflict and humour. Norina can be a very physical role, demanding in terms of actions and movement, in that all-important interaction and timing, working with the other members of the cast, as well as in pushing a soprano to her limits in terms of singing. Nafornita looks and sounds the part, bright and vivacious, with an impressive vocal range that makes her performance and its contribution to the whole a sheer joy.
There's not a great deal to be gained from attempting to update or play around with the mechanics of Don Pasquale. Mariame Clément's production for Glyndebourne 2013, for example, attempted to unravel the plot and push it in another direction and ended up falling flat on its face, although it wasn't helped by some weak performances that failed to connect with the comedy. Irina Brook's direction, in contrast, is clear and supportive of the comedy. It doesn't over-complicate the interaction and the relationships between the characters, but allows them the freedom to play off each other in the manner the Donizetti intended, making full use of the ample opportunities that this provides.
The set is not a traditional one, but is nonetheless captures the essence of the work itself. It's bright, colourful, smart and a little bit tacky. Tacky in a good way, of course. The action takes place not in Don Pasquale's home, but in what looks more like a hotel lobby with a bar in the corner. We can maybe assume that Don Pasquale is a successful hotel owner rather than a guest, with employees instead of servants, since the transformed Norina seems to be free to come in and turn everything upside down, with a taste for pink and glitter. It's a style as fake as Norina, an image calculated to that infuriate her 'husband' with cheap dazzle that nonetheless is an expensive extravagance. Even the fake palms in the lobby provide the perfect cover for Sofronia's fake meeting with her lover, Ernesto.
It all has a way then of coming together, playing to the mood, retaining the integrity of the comedy, without stretching the situation beyond the limit where it successfully works. Jesús López-Cobos ensures that all the musical element fall into place, the orchestra playing with verve and energy in the spirit of the work, rather than reverentially. The same sense of comic timing and interaction that is there between the cast is necessary also in the pit, and between the pit and the singers, and it also needs to be in the spirit of the stage production. That's the challenge of comic opera and it's not easy to achieve, as a failing on any one level can have a knock-on effect on the rest, but the Wiener Staatsoper production makes it look deceptively light and easy.
Don Pasquale was broadcast live from the Vienna State Opera as part of their Live at Home programme. The next broadcast is Sven-Eric Bechtolf's production of DAS RHEINGOLD on 30 May and DIE WALKURE on 31 May. Both are conducted by Simon Rattle. Details of how to view these productions live at home can be found in the links below.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video
