Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Royal Opera House, 2015 - Cinema Live)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer
Royal Opera House, 2015

Andris Nelsons, Tim Albery, Bryn Terfel, Adrianne Pieczonka, Michael König, Peter Rose, Ed Lyon, Catherine Wyn-Rogers

Royal Opera House, Live Cinema Season - 24 February 2015

Wagner's operas are notoriously difficult to stage. Leaving aside the unique issues associated with putting on a Ring cycle, even the one-act version of Der fliegende Holländer presents its own challenges. And they are not just technical considerations. Although there might not appear to be much room for a director to manoeuvre a particular reading or concept into an account of ghost ships sailing on the seas, you'd be surprised at how the underlying themes can and have been developed. But do they really get to the heart of what Wagner intended to put across?

Tim Alberry's production for the Royal Opera House's production doesn't attempt anything too ambitious, unless you think that getting right back to the essentials of the work is ambitious, and I suppose when you're talking about Wagner, that might well be true. As tempting as it is to see Wagner himself at the centre of Der fliegende Holländer (his exile, his money problems, his belief in love and sacrifice) and as tempting as it is to apply these issues to modern-day concerns (globalisation, commerce, imperialism, asylum-seeking) - the most important thing about the work is the work itself. And I think even Wagner was aware of that in the first opera where he successfully found his own individual voice.

The Royal Opera House production, without getting too literal, period or traditional in terms of stage directions, makes a good case for Der fliegende Holländer working best when you simply let Wagner take over, when you let the orchestration and the singing carry the full weight and import of the score. The set and the staging don't work against this, nor do they attempt to enhance the impact or effects that can be achieved by the revolutionary score alone. The production design simply provides the necessary platform for all the mood, all the force, all the yearning, all the drama that is in the score itself to be expressed to its fullest extent. Even viewing the performance on screen in a live broadcast - I can only imagine what it must have felt like live - this was a spine-tingling production that just seemed to set Wagner's first true masterwork wide open.

And in the process, the ROH production reveals that spine-tingling is exactly what Der fliegende Holländer ought to be. That might not be revelatory, but the impact that Wagner is aiming for can sometimes get lost in the concept. There's no need to think too hard about it. It's a ghost story, a legend, a story of huge romantic passions. It's certainly informed by Wagner's own personal experiences, his own sensibility and beliefs, as well as by his extraordinary ability to translate those ideas into musical terms. The rush and the roar of those wild seas, the sweeping overwhelming passions, is all there in the music and expressed in Wagner's new approach to the flow of through composition in the music and in the singing. The impact is all the more effective in the one-act version, and the ROH production sustains that enveloping mood extraordinarily well in the staging, but even more so in the all-important musical performance.

The music is the largely left to work its own magic in the overture, and that's spine-tinglingly good on its own - but when it works hand-in-hand with the production, it's all the more effective. The main set - which only changes significantly for Act II's scene in the sewing factory - is a long bowed hull of a ship, with thick ropes and dripping water pooling at the front of the stage. It's chilling enough on its own and effective to support the haunting melodies that have been established in the overture and the Steersman's lament, but the musical motif announcing the arrival of the Dutchman's ship drops the temperature further. All it needs is a huge shadow to cross the set to match the enormity of the ship and the enormity of the intent and passions that lie within it. The set, along with Andris Nelson's wondrous management of the ROH orchestra, gives this impression of vast, mythological forces, and the trick of any production of Der fliegende Holländer as a music-drama is to harness those forces and get them across in human terms.

That's mainly a challenge for the singers, and I've rarely heard one that has been as consistently good across every single role - not forgetting the vital impact of the chorus either. Bryn Terfel certainly carried the world-weary demeanour of the Dutchman well, but the other facets of his personality were also well-characterised. A sense of hope struggling against near-desperation gives him a dangerous allure in his scenes with Daland, but his uncertainty and vulnerability in relation to love and the possibility of Senta failing him is all there too. It's there as much in the singing as the acting performance, and if there are one or two places where the full intensity isn't sustained (Tyrfel had withdrawn from an earlier performance, so might not have been on full form here), it's no less a strong, near-definitive performance.

Just how good the opera can be is shown when you have a Dutchman like this matched against a Senta like Adrianne Pieczonka. Not for a second does her performance waver from her character's dangerous obsession, but the depth of that obsession also extends to the depths of Senta's feelings for this lost man, making it warm and supremely human. It requires none of the shock impact of a grandstanding sacrificial death, the loss of the Dutchman's trust is enough to destroy her here. You really get a sense of that in her performance, which is outstanding on every level. If Michael König's Erik lacked a similar depth, it's only on account of his character's nature being dwarfed by those of Senta and the Dutchman. Peter Rose, announced as suffering a cold, nonetheless sang beautifully and lyrically with great sensitivity as Daland. Ed Lyon made a great impression as a luxuriously warm Steersman, and Catherine Wyn-Rogers was a fine Mary.

The singing was clearly in capable hands, but everything needs to work along with it and revival Daniel Dooner clearly had a good handle on Tim Albery's original stage directions, bringing it together to work as a whole. The importance of the chorus cannot be underestimated, particularly for the intensity they bring to the confrontation between the sailors, their wives and the Dutchman's crew and the Royal Opera Chorus brought this out with rising intensity. The man who really had to bring it all together was Andris Nelsons, and really with every side playing to the top of their game on a such a work as Der fliegende Holländer, that's a huge responsibility. It was more than just a question of marshalling the pace, rhythm and energy of Wagner's score however, and more than just working to the strengths of the singers. Nelsons also captured that spine-tingling edge to Wagner's mythological storytelling, and that indeed was revelatory of where the true greatness and character of the work lies.

Wagner - Lohengrin

Richard Wagner - Lohengrin

Bayreuth Festival 2011

Andris Nelsons, Hans Neuenfels, Reinhard von der Thannen, Georg Zeppenfeld, Klaus Florian Vogt, Annette Dasch, Jukka Rasilainen, Petra Lang, Samuel Youn, Stefan Heibach, Willem van der Heyden, Rainer Zaun, Christian Tschelebiew

Opus Arte

It’s refreshing to see Wagner approached with a critical eye, one that doesn’t just accept his work with a deferential, respectful attitude, played straight and full of grandiose pomposity, but rather strives to find the deeper qualities in his work and consider how - or even whether - they still have meaning and relevance to the world of opera and to the world in general. It’s also refreshing - surprising for some, shocking for others - that it’s at Bayreuth, the home of Wagner and under the directorship of the composer’s great-daughter Katarina Wagner, that some of the most radical and irreverent productions are being undertaken. Hans Neuenfels’ 2010 production of Lohengrin, recorded here at the Festival in 2011, is consequently another radical reworking of Wagner’s own mythology that has generated some amount of controversy and bewilderment, and it’s not hard to see why.

Lohengrin has always been one of the most difficult Wagner operas to approach, partly because of where it stands in the development of the composer finding his own voice and partly because of the history that has become attached to it through its association with Nazism. Even though the work is often grouped as one of the three earlier operas (along with Der Fliegende Höllander and Tannhäuser) that saw Wagner still finding his way towards the reformation of opera into a music-drama artform that would exalt and give expression to essential German characteristics as expressed in ancient myths and legends, it is nonetheless the most clear and consistently ‘Wagnerian’ of those earlier works. If there is any fault with the work, it’s not so much musical as the fact that it tends to put across those ideals of German purity across in a way that allowed them to be treated simplistically and seized upon in later years as an expression of Aryan supremacy. With its bold choruses of Germanic voices chanting 'Sieg Heil', the subsequent history of the work beyond the composer’s lifetime can’t be ignored, and it means that a director needs to be very careful about how such scenes are staged.

Hans Neuenfels’ idea then isn’t in itself necessarily a bad one. He correctly sees that there is much more to Lohengrin than solemn declarations of Germanic might and purity, but that there is an essential element of humanity and romanticism in the work. And not only does it subject those noble characteristics to examination, but there is a wider consideration and a deep understanding in Lohengrin of the flaws and weaknesses in the German character also, as well as a sense of humour that is often ignored in Wagner. In some respects then for Neuenfels, Lohengrin represents a kind of social experiment for Wagner, where he pits conflicting German characteristics against each other - often in very broad terms of good and evil - and explores the impact they have on society, here in its setting of Brabant. Little did Wagner realise how those German characteristics would later find expression in Nazism, or how much the work itself would play a part in the formation of those ideals, but perhaps Lohengrin’s social experiment does indeed prophetically shed a light on just how German society can give rise to those kind of sentiments.

The difficulty with Neuenfels’ direction of Lohengrin for Bayreuth however is in how he and production designer Reinhard von der Thannen take the idea of the opera as a social experiment through a reductio ad absurdum where Brabant literally becomes a laboratory and its citizens run around for the most part dressed in black, white and pink mouse costumes. It all looks very silly indeed and definitely not how you expect to see Wagner traditionally produced. But then again it’s clearly the intention of the director to totally break down those preconceptions and the historical baggage that comes with the opera, and at the very least you can safely say that there has never been a Lohengrin like this one. The staging is colourful and well-choreographed, while the modernist, clean-line, brightly lit stage that is now a distinctive feature of Bayreuth in recent years is far from the dark theatricality that you normally associate with opera productions. Using animated sequences moreover, the production takes a Rashomon-like perspective on the nature of Truth (Wahrheit) in relation to the alleged drowning of Gottfried, the heir to the throne of Brabant, by his sister Elsa, and highlights the changing reaction of the people (the rats), to the unfolding of these events. Along with the people’s reaction to the call to arms by King Heinrich “The Fowler” to fight against Hungary that comes at the same time, this is definitely an interesting angle to explore.

As a theme then, the production certainly has validity and relevance to Wagner’s work, remaining relatively faithful to its narrative progression despite the often absurd imagery that is used, and it is at least fascinating to watch and highly original. Rather than bringing out any underlying complexity in the work however, it seems to either just exaggerate the broad black-and-white characterisation in the most simplistic terms with blatant symbolism (swans on one side, rats on the other) and obvious colour-coding, or else smother it in obscure references and imagery when the fit isn’t quite perfect. It hardly deals with the more problematic questions raised by the work and its historical legacy, and despite the attempt to draw out the type of humour from the work that you might find more readily in Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg, it doesn’t seem to work particularly well with the musical language employed by Wagner either. It’s more of a “commentary” on Lohengrin than a vision that makes a true meaningful connection with the work. Whether this failing to fully connect with the heart of the piece is a problem for the performers or not is hard to say, but although it’s wonderfully played by the orchestra, Andris Nelsons at least seems to struggle to find a tone to match the uneven and bizarre antics on the stage.

The singing too - something unfortunately not always given due consideration at Bayreuth - is again not really strong enough here to make the idea work, although some singers manage better than others. Klaus Florian Vogt is simply made to play Lohengrin, singing it here - as he does in the Kent Nagano/Nikolaus Lehnhoff production already available on Blu-ray - with a beautiful lyrical purity of tone that seems wonderfully fitted to his character. His voice could hardly be more of a contrast to that of Jonas Kaufmann who sang the role in this production last year. Georg Zeppenfeld is also very impressive as King Henry, singing wonderfully with authority but also with an edge of character instability that works well with the concept here. Petra Lang alone gives the kind of powerful, commanding Wagnerian performance you would expect. She is absolutely stunning on those high passages - although not always as strong across the range - and she consequently cuts an appropriately fearsome figure as Ortrud. She seems to adapt better to the ‘baddie’ role than Jukka Rasilainen, who looks and sounds hopelessly out of place here as Telramund. Annette Dasch too clearly finds the singing and the interpretation something of a struggle - but Elsa is by no means an easy role and there are enough good points to admire in her performance here. The chorus work - notwithstanding its members having to wear rat costumes - is simply outstanding.

On Blu-ray in High Definition, the brightly lit and colourful stage looks most impressive, the cameras finding plenty of low and high angles to capture the whole scope of the stage direction without getting too carried away. The audio tracks, in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 are exceptionally good, with the orchestra and singing well recorded and mixed. Instead of the usual bland Bayreuth Making Of feature, the extras principally consist of four five minute interviews with Katarina Wagner, Hans Neuenfels, Klaus Florian Vogt and Annette Dasch, but also include a Cast Gallery and the three animated Wahrheit sequences. The booklet contains an essay with further information and interpretation of the ideas in the production, and a full synopsis.

Puccini - Turandot

Giacomo Puccini - Turandot

Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2009

Andris Nelsons, Franco Zeffirelli, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, Marina Poplavskaya, Samuel Ramey, Charles Anthony, Joshua Hopkins, Tony Stevenson, Eduardo Valdes

Decca

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that Turandot is an underrated opera, but its most famous aria, ‘Nessun Dorma’, has tended to overshadow the other qualities that the work has to offer. Puccini’s final opera (the last scene completed after his death by Franco Alfano) also has more to it than a superficial look at the fairy-tale nature of the story – based on a work by the 18th century Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi – might suggest, or indeed the exotic Oriental inflections of the opera’s music score. Turandot actually contains some of Puccini’s finest musical compositions, the composer bringing his considerable talent to bear on the overall structure and arrangement, while also finding – as he always does – beautiful melodies that express a depth of emotion and character that one might not expect to find in the piece.

There’s a human heart in the story of a cruel princess, Turandot, who demands that anyone seeking her hand in marriage must first give the answer to three riddles that she sets – and where there’s a human heart, few are as expressive as Giacomo Puccini. Despite the consequence of failure being beheading, many noble princes have tried and failed to answer the riddles set by Turandot, and the deaths of so many have cast a long and bloody stain on the Emperor’s reign and despair on the people of his kingdom. An unknown prince however is determined to take his chance, despite the dangers, despite the warnings from the royal court, and despite the pleas of those closest to him, one of whom is Liu, a slave girl who is in love with him.

Puccini sets up the nature of this situation beautifully in Act 1, capturing the full range of the conflicting sentiments of each of the main players, and if the actual staging of the riddle contest in Act 2 is less than perfectly arranged, it’s an occasion for a terrific duel of singing voices between the soprano and the tenor. Although it seems like we have to wait until Act 3 to fully understand what is at stake (and get Nessun Dorma), there are nonetheless hints to the nature of the characters and the conflicting issues between them in the answers to the riddles. It’s hope that lies within Calef, but it is due to die at dawn, his answers to the riddles having failed to melt the burning ice of Turandot, and it’s only through the blood of Liu that the situation is resolved and the true nature of love is revealed. If this doesn’t quite add up to full character development, the beauty of Puccini’s musical arrangements makes up the difference. The Oriental touches are not merely pastiche either – Puccini seems to understand the nature of this foreign and discordant music and the sentiments that lie within it, and he meaningfully and skilfully weaves it into his score to great effect.

Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish production for The Met could also be accused of extravagance, kitsch and overstatement, but in reality it’s perfectly in keeping with the tone and the nature of Puccini’s drama. Zeffirelli’s huge sets capture the grandness of the occasion, the decadence of the royal court and the magical qualities of the fairy-tale nature of the subject, but it also pays attention to the details in the costume design, as well as in the position of the characters within the sets and in relation to one another. Those qualities are also borne out in the performance of the Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons, who grasp the full force and dymanic of this extraordinary opera, and in the singing performances from a fine cast. Guleghina and Giordani play well together and rise to the exceptional demands of their roles, but it’s Marina Poplavskaya who positively shines as Liu. Poplavskaya can sometimes be a little inconsistent and out of her depth in certain roles, but she has a great emotional quality in her voice and it comes through here brilliantly. In every respect this production is just magnificent – there’s no other word for it.

The Blu-ray release from Decca has an unfortunate fault with the English subtitles – at least on the initial batch of copies. English subtitles are a full 37 seconds out of sync with the voices, though they seem fine on the other languages (I got by on French). The subs work fine if you access Act 3 directly from the chapter menu (if you want to get to Nessun Dorma, for example), but they cannot be made to synchronise for any of the other acts through this method. It’s a pity, because in all other respects, this is a superb High Definition presentation of the Met’s 2009 Live in HD recording that brings out the full colourful glory of Zeffirelli’s production, and packs a punch on the HD sound mixes. The recording keeps the same format as the HD Live broadcasts, introduced here by Patricia Racette, who also conducts interviews with Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, and Charles Anthony during the interval between Act 2 and 3.