Béla Bartók - Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Irish National Opera, Dublin - 2018
André de Ridder, Enda Walsh, Joshua Bloom, Paula Murrihy, Elijah O'Sullivan
The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin - 13 October 2018
The
new Irish National Opera's inaugural season is promising to be an
ambitious and varied one, and not just in terms of repertoire and
touring productions; they've also taken the opportunity to draw on
Ireland's tremendous singing, musical and theatrical resources. For
Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle sung in Hungarian, a work that for all its
brevity is no mean challenge, the Irish National Opera have called upon
playwright Enda Walsh to direct the production.
Walsh is
no stranger to opera, having worked as librettist and director on
Donnacha Dennehy's The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist, and he
brings some familiar touches to Bartók's darkly fascinating Duke
Bluebeard's Castle. The director comes to the work apparently with some
preconceptions, but finds that such a work inevitably exerts it own
power and meaning, and in a way he manages to deliver on both proposals.
It's not as if the underlying moral of Bluebeard's
Castle is difficult to work out. Judith comes to the Castle as the new
wife of Duke Bluebeard and wants to know everything about her husband,
all his dark secrets, good and bad, and Bluebeard has quite a
reputation, not least for the unknown fate of his previous wives. Walsh
puts emphasis on the allegorical aspect of Judith wishing to open the
seven locked doors of the castle and shed some light into its dark
corners, adding sound effects of creaks, groans and eerie noises that
suggest something terrifying lying in those inaccessible recesses.
In
terms of creating atmosphere and tension, it's highly effective and
complementary to Bartók's menacing score, but Walsh also sees the opera
as an exploration of a couple who are just getting to know each other,
testing out each other's limits and seeking to establish dominant roles.
The old-fashioned gender distinctions are still there, but dropping
Duke from the opera's title and dressing the couple in modern clothes,
Walsh wants to use them consider how this applies to a modern marriage
and whether there is indeed any significant difference in who literally
holds the keys to the relationship.
Emphasising the
allegorical, there's no physical opening of doors in Jamie Vartan's set
design other than the fissure that runs down the middle of the
formidable solid-looking stone wall at the back of the stage. The
revelation of the other rooms, revealing masculine obsessions with
power, money and violence, are shown in those abstract terms as
projections and shifts of light and colour, putting emphasis not on
their allure but on some sense of horror and shame that lies behind
their acquisition.
All of this builds up of course to the
sinister mystery of what lies behind the seventh door and, as I've
said, Enda Walsh - following along with the slow mounting tension and blasts
of horror in Bartók's score - builds the tension superbly with great
attention to atmosphere. There really is a sense of mounting
dread as the wall parts to reveal what is behind the final locked door;
and the revelation is chilling (almost literally, as you can feel the
cold air rush forward from the back of the stage of the Gaiety Theatre).
Bluebeard's three wives emerge, confronting Judith with the knowledge
that Bluebeard has also had deep relationships with other women,
something that she needs to know, but once she does (and in the light of
revelations of Bluebeard's true nature from the other rooms) it forever
changes how she sees her husband.
The decision to dress
the three gothically pale former wives in dusty faded 18th century ball
gowns doesn't really fit with the modern aesthetic elsewhere in the
production, but that's almost certainly intentional. If Walsh is
applying the allegory of Duke Bluebeard's Castle to a modern
relationship, the fate of Judith to similarly accept the old-fashioned
attire of the previous wives only emphasises the reality that nothing
has changed, that the distinctions and roles remain largely the same as
they have been since the dark ages. The allegorical nature of the work
allows room to consider the moral as not quite simplistic as all men are
domineering aggressive brutes with dark silent desires and women are
fatally victim of their own insatiable curiosity and pushiness.
Walsh
perhaps can't risk leaving it on that note, so there is another
revelation lying deeper within the seventh room, one that explains the
significance of the young boy at the start of the opera (padding out the
short length of the one-act work) by building a speaker and delivering
an additional message in English before the traditional Hungarian
prologue. The revelation of abandoned children sitting among ruins
could be a reference to the disturbing proclivities of Gilles de Rais,
the real-life inspiration for Duke Bluebeard, but it also opens the
hermetic relationship drama out to the realities of how those dark urges
for power, money and violence can lead to miseries elsewhere in the
world.
If this idea was going to work it really needed
the full support of the musical and singing forces and there was much to
offer and impress on that front. Conductor André de Ridder perfectly
controlled the wide dynamic of the work allowing space for the drama to
work within it, but also insuring a wide spacial dynamic within and
outside the pit for the harp on one side and the booming percussion up
at the back of the other side of the stage. Paula Murrihy's Judith was
delivered with lyrical and dramatic conviction and Duke Bluebeard was
well characterised by Joshua Bloom. His warm timbre was underpinned by
a steely defiance that managed not only to be menacing, but seductive
and even loving, particularly when describing the qualities of his three
previous wives. The results were thrilling and chilling.
Links: Irish National Opera
Donnacha Dennehy - The Last Hotel
Wide Open Opera, Dublin - 2015
Alan Pierson, André de Ridder, Enda Walsh, Robin Adams, Claudia Boyle, Katherine Manley, Mikel Murfi
Sky Arts, 2016
The concept and playing out of the first opera by Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh is what you might call situational; which is why it's called The Last Hotel, I guess. It involves only three characters who come to a run-down and quite sinister hotel with some rather unsettling if somewhat vague intentions, plus one non-singing character, a demonic hotel porter.
Sinister and demonic are perhaps the key words here, as there's little that you'll find common or inviting as you try to figure out who these people are, what has brought them together and what they are doing at the hotel. There is very much a 'huis clos' kind of feel to a situation that is quite divorced from any kind of realism, and you do indeed even wonder if the Last Hotel is indeed some kind of waiting room for the after-life where these characters have met up in death.
As it happens, no-one has died yet, or at least none of the three principal characters; I can't say anything for sure about the existential state of the demonic porter who is seen rapidly cleaning up the blood from the last guests, but it's clear that death is not far away. As the Woman introduces herself and makes small-talk conversation about the journey over to the hotel with the Man and his Wife, we find out that death is very much on the agenda.
The exchanges and the interior monologues that each of the three of them express are however rather vague and poetically impressionistic. All of them however are rather nervous, a little bit panicky about what is to take place, and all of them are trying to put a brave face on what they are about to participate in. A rehearsal is proposed and it becomes apparent that the Man and his Wife have agreed to come to the hotel to help the Woman end her life. For reasons that are similarly unclear, but edgily urgent...
If there is an edgy urgency to the situation and a sinister and demonic aspect to what is to transpire, it's conveyed primarily by the driving propulsion of Donnacha Dennehy's distinctive music score. Performed by the terrific Crash Ensemble, Dennehy's music has the percussive energetic chug of Michael Nyman, but supplemented with flute, accordion and electric guitar it is underpinned by a structure and rhythm that has all the cadences, repetitive loops and shifts of Irish traditional music.
It's the music that gives the otherwise fairly obscure and poetic reverie of Enda Walsh's libretto its essential character. The three characters do interact, but it's mostly nervous small-talk that skirts around the purpose of their being at the hotel. They do break out or rather slip inward into more reflective consideration of their condition, but there are no specifics that reveal anything about the circumstances that have brought them together at this point. If it comes together at all, it's very much down to the music keeping up a tone and a momentum.
If the words don't carry much in the way of information or insight, there is at least some expression of character and situation in the writing for the voice. It's a surprisingly lyrical piece and not as recitative heavy as you might expect a contemporary English-language opera to be. Again, I think much of this has to do with the Irish music rhythms that align lyrically to the voice, and the urgent continuity of those rhythms and the tensions that are generated inevitably pushes the voices into the higher registers.
Premiered at the Edinburgh festival, Wide Open Opera's The Last Hotel also ran at the 2015 Dublin Theatre Festival (Dennehy's second opera with Enda Walsh The Second Violinist will feature there in the 2017 festival) and it was filmed there at the O'Reilly Theatre for Sky Arts. Originally conducted by André de Ridder, Alan Pierson takes over the direction of the 12-piece Crash Ensemble for the filmed performance.
The film version retains the minimal sets of the stage production for the live performance, but includes filmed cut-aways in and around a hotel when the focus turns on the individuals having their 'moments', giving the opera a little more room to expand outwards without losing any of its intensity. The intensity of the work and the kind of challenges of the singing are taken up well by the cast, with Claudia Boyle the Woman, Robin Adams the Man and Katherine Manley his Wife.
It took a week to get B*Witched's C'est la Vie out of my head.
Links: The Last Hotel, Wide Open Opera
Kaija Saariaho - Only the Sound Remains
Dutch National Opera, 2016
André de Ridder, Peter Sellars, Philippe Jaroussky, Davone Tines, Nora Kimball-Mentos, Heleen Koele, Marian Dijkhuizen, Albert van Ommen, Gilad Nezer
Nationale Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam - 15 March 2016
The few indications of what you could expect from the new opera by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho suggested that it was going to be quite 'arty' in conception. The fact that the piece was to be based on two Japanese Nôh dramas adapted and directed by Peter Sellars certainly prompted this impression and expectations of slowness and paucity of drama were indeed met at the 2016 World Premiere of Only the Sound Remains in Amsterdam. Where the work exceeded all expectations however was in the richness of the musical language that Saariaho employed with a minimum of instruments, and in how successfully it expressed the inner meaning of the work.
When you are dealing with Nôh drama, that is obviously the most important aspect to get across. Japanese Nôh theatre, the Dutch National Opera's promotional material told us "was born from the Buddhist idea that light is concealed largely in darkness, so as not to blind mere mortals." The conceptual approach to the subject then is a sound one, in more than one sense of the word. Reduced down to their simplest form, symbolism largely taking the place of any representational view of the dramatic staging, it's indeed only the sound that remains as a way of delving into the darkness that separates mortals from the true light on the other side of the veil.
That's very high concept and somewhat airy-fairy, so let's deal with the more objective reality of what is represented on the stage in the two short operas. Both of the Nôh dramas deal with a contact that is established between a mortal and a being from "the other side". In 'Always Strong', a Buddhist priest evokes the spirit of the legendary warrior Tsunemasa during a ceremony in his honour. Tsunemasa's ghost is drawn back by the offering of a lute that was a gift from the Emperor, the warrior appearing in the form of a shadow that eventually disappears leaving only the sound of his voice remaining behind. In the second story 'Feather Mantle', a fisherman finds the feather robe of an angel, and only agrees to return it if the angel will agree to perform a celestial dance in exchange.
There is not really any greater complexity to the dramas than is outlined above, and not really any great sense of meaning that you can take from the descriptions or indeed the libretti for the works alone. What is important, as much in opera as in Nôh drama, is the essence of the performance itself, and the clue to the nature of art as a medium of communication with "the other" is in the works themselves. It's a musical instrument, a lute, that permits the Priest to hear the voice from the spirit world, and it's through the dance of an angel that a humble fisherman is able to see beyond it to experience a vision of the waxing and waning of the moon. Sellars' direction keeps the works as simple as that, with little use of props and only two or three figures on the largely bare stage, with only a thin veil and lighting/shadows used to show the separation between the physical and spiritual worlds.
Watching Only the Sound Remains, I was reminded of another recent new opera, Georg Friedrich Haas' Morgen und Abend which premiered at the Royal Opera House last year, but only in as far as how Sellars similarly reduces the dramatic content in his libretto to deal with a subject that lies outside normal human experience. Like Morgen und Abend - although the musical approach is very different (the range of modern music far wider than most suspect) - Only the Sound Remains also attempts to extend the range of music drama, using new sounds and techniques to describe something that mere language and a dramatic construct alone cannot hope to reach; an attempt to grasp a sense of the other.
Kaija Saariaho's music is the vital element that establishes the connection to the spiritual side in both works, and it is really is something quite astonishing. The music is performed by a small seven-piece ensemble that consists of a string quartet, percussion, flute and Finnish kantele harp. The string quartet, and perhaps the percussion as well, creates a kind of an ambient atmospheric drone background mood music that could be said to be representative of the physical world. The more expressive exploration of the light on the other side is achieved mainly through the soft flow of the flute and the extraordinary otherworldly plucked string sounds of the kantele. More than the choice of instruments, it's the incredible way that they interact that establishes the connection between the physical world and the spiritual. The overall impact and richness of this sound world is mesmerising, Saariaho enlarging the palette of sound she can achieve using these acoustic instruments alone, with little need this time for the use of electronics.
Electronics were used only noticeably in one or two places in the second piece, and mainly then on the voice. The use of the singing voice is evidently another hugely important element of the overall soundscape here and again Saariaho's writing for it in Only the Sound Remains is just extraordinary. Both pieces are written for only two singers on the stage; a baritone for the priest and the fisherman; a countertenor for the ghost and for the angel (with a dancer doubling the role). Here alone the desired sound is fully realised with Davone Tines integrating with the earthier sounds of the physical world and Philippe Jaroussky's countertenor soaring to reach that otherworldly level. A quartet of singers in the raised orchestra pit however also forms part of that vital function of connecting the two planes in a kind of narrator role, even taking a performance role mirroring gestures on the stage.
Although the two works like the two worlds they explore remain separate, there is of course much that connects them and Sellars' libretto, along with his on-stage visual clues and Saariaho's dynamic musical expression of the light and dark, help bring out the underlying commonalities in the works and the message that lies within them. The interaction that occurs in both plays suggests an answer to the question of why there isn't a stronger bond between the two worlds on either side of the veil. The ghost of Tsunemasa reliving the horror of the wars and the angels held earthbound by human doubts, show that those on the other side tend to come off badly when they come into contact with the physical world. If they leave any trace behind in the world, only the sound that remains and, when expressed like this in music, in poetry and dance, it's the closest thing we have to heaven on earth.
Links: DNO
Claudio Monteverdi - Orpheus/Odysseus/Poppea
Komische Oper, Berlin - 2014
André de Ridder, Barrie Kosky, Dominik Köninger, Julia Novikova, Peter Renz, Günter Papendell, Ezgi Kutlu, Tansel Akzeybek, Brigitte Geller, Roger Smeets, Helene Schneiderman
Arthaus Musk - Blu-ray
Barrie Kosky's work is becoming more widely known in the UK from colourful, fresh and not entirely controversy-free productions of mainly Baroque opera at the ENO (Rameau's Castor and Pollux), Glyndebourne (Handel's Saul) and Edinburgh (Mozart's The Magic Flute), but the Australian director is also the artistic director at the Komische Oper in Berlin, the city's German language opera company. You can expect then that his Monteverdi Trilogy (L'Orfeo, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria and L'Incoronazione di Poppea the composer's only existing complete operas) is going to be very different from any other versions of some of opera's earliest and greatest compositions. You don't know the half of it...
It's the Komische, so even Monteverdi is subjected to the German language treatment. That might sound strange to the ears were the works performed in an historically-informed way on period instruments, but remarkably the musical interpretation is just as "translated" here. While the melodic line and continuo is followed in as far as Monteverdi variously scored it for these works with theorbo and bass viol, Elena Kats-Chemin has introduced new instrumentation for all three works, including an accordion, a banjo and an electric guitar as well as a range of exotic instruments like the djoza from Iran, a West African kora (bridge-harp) and a Syrian oud (lute).
The familiar melodies and rhythmic structure is there, but less rigidly adhered to, blending into a much richer texture of plucked and hammered sounds that actually give a real kick to the arrangements. It's not just the colour of the instruments that is used either, but the melody can stray into a tango, into German jazz, Slavic folk, klezmer or ragtime swing. It might sound outrageous, but it gets across the wide dynamic of the tones within and across these works and is always appropriate to the context. What is also fascinating is hearing those instruments play baroque music and discovering the connections the various styles have with one another. It's as if they can all be ultimately traced back to Monteverdi, and I suppose in a way they can.
Needless to say, Barrie Kosky revels in the opportunities to match the colour and playful nature of the music with vividly bright, colourful productions that are inventive in situation on a busy stage that is usually a riot of dance and movement. Musically and in terms of staging, reflecting the director's concept of the loss and ultimate destruction of the Arcadian ideal across the three works, the trilogy is at its most elaborate in Orpheus (L'Orfeo). This would be appropriate for a work that spans such a wide range of human experiences and emotions, from joyful celebration to mournful despair and the determination of Orpheus not to be defeated by the cruel war constantly waged between the Gods subjecting mankind to the whims of Time, Love, Fate and Chance.
Kosky's production then strongly marks the contrast between Paradise and Hell, illustrating the endeavours of Orpheus and the power of human art and ingenuity to celebrate love and beauty in the face of outrageous fortune. The stage is filled with movement, with dancers and life-size puppets, but it works in a complementary way with the nature of the subject and with the unconventional musical interpretation conducted here by André de Ridder. As the most adventurous of the three stagings, it works marvellously, allowing the German language performance to fit in well with the celebration of life in all its richness and colour. The singing performances by Dominik Köninger as Orpheus, Julia Novikova as Eurydice and Peter Renz as Amor, no doubt help make that work as well with the sheer lyrical beauty of the voices.
The rather more austere staging for Odysseus (Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria) doesn't significantly alter the impact that is achieved by the richness of the work itself. Accordingly, the music has the same kind of musical reinterpretation but with a different colour from that of Orpheus. Turkish melodies and rhythms infuse Poppea's lament and other imaginative musical flourishes on a grand piano are inserted in those Monteverdean short bursts of melody in the middle of recitative. The scene of the three suitors characterises their claims with a tango rhythm or a burst of a Habanera. Again without destroying the composer's structure, this is very much in the spirit of improvisation and interpretation that are a vital element to the make-up of Monteverdi's operas, the singing voices taking up the main expression of emotions. Ezgi Kutlu in particular impresses here as Poppea, but Günter Papendell's Odysseus and Tansel Akzeybek's Telemachus are also very strong.
In terms of the advancing the concept of the staging, one of the main factors that establishes the tone of the work is of course the Prelude. In Odysseus, Time, Fortune and Love make fools of the activities of men and the purpose of Odysseus. The expedition to Troy and the war that ensued has led to Odysseus blown off course for 20 years. Arcadia has been lost, Odysseus is wandering, longing for a return to peace in his homeland, with his family and loved ones, and it is also causing Penelope great torment. The 'patria' here then is nothing more then than the green, green grass of home, a mostly bare platform with the orchestra behind the performers. The period is kind of late-60s/early-70s, the suitors looking particularly sleazy as if they've just spilled out of a bar hoping to pick up a wealthy widow, but the tone at the same time colourfully evokes nostalgia for old-fashioned ways.
The set is also minimally dressed for Poppea (L'Incoronazione di Poppea), but this is more than compensated for by the colour, movement and stage directions that extend out beyond the orchestra pit on a wide platform. Disappointingly however, having got quite used to it in the other two works, the musical reinterpretation is less evident here, despite L'incoronazione di Poppea being a work that has a wide range of emotional colour and variety of situation. A little bit of electric guitar makes fitful appearances, and banjos are used to bring a little more of an edge to the basso continuo. Somehow however, despite the fact that great care has been take to establish a distinct sound world to each of the works, it isn't until quite late in the piece that the instrumentation finds the kind of rhythmic pulse that should drive the work.
Barrie Kosky however is not short of ways to use the singers, dancers and supernumerary sprites to push the expressions of all the violent and lustful passions in Poppea into the movement and exhibition of the body. There is a considerable amount of full-frontal nudity here, mostly male, none of which is the least bit erotic. Amor - a vital character to all three works (sung in each by Peter Renz) - is a constant presence here, but again taking its lead from the prelude, Love might be dominant, but Virtue has been defeated and Arcadia destroyed. Poppea takes place consequently on the side of a volcano, grey, with large boulders littering the landscape. The contrast between Nero and Poppea's violent love and the monstrousness of their actions towards others is depicted in all its horror, and matched by the intense singing. All of the performers are simply outstanding here, but I particularly liked Helene Schneiderman's unrepentantly vengeful Octavia.
The quality of the visual aspect of each of the Blu-ray discs is fine, but there is a little bit of haziness to the image with some minor blurring in movement that is not as clinically sharp as most HD releases. On Orpheus and Odysseus, there is a kind of yellowish tint with gives a warmer tone. These characteristics are less evident on Poppea, which also seems sharper. The singing sounds a little amplified which might be down to the use of radio mics, although they are not obviously worn by the performers, and the mixing is not quite as bright as you might find on recordings of baroque music. It's warmly toned if you like, and comes over well on the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and PCM stereo mixes, but best of all on headphones. Subtitles are in German, English, French and Turkish. There are no extra feaures on the discs, but there are synopses and a great deal of information on the production in the large booklet that comes with the box set.
