Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos
Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018
Marc
Albrecht, Katie Mitchell, Lise Davidsen, Eric Cutler, Sabine Devieilhe,
Angela Brower, Huw Montague Rendall, Jonathan Abernethy, Emilio Pons,
David Shipley, Beate Mordal, Andrea Hill, Elena Galitskaya, Josef
Wagner, Rupert Charlesworth, Petter Moen, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin,
Maik Solbach, Sava Vemić, Paul Herwig, Julia Wieninger
ARTE Concert - 11 July 2018
For
a work that I used to consider a bit of a one-note meta-theatrical joke
confected as a compromise to a failed theatrical/operatic crossover,
Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos has continued to enjoy popularity and
stimulate a variety of interpretations. It shouldn't be that
surprising, because at its heart the work is precisely about how art as
entertainment (and particularly opera) has a unique way of connecting
with people to express and communicate a rich variety of life
experiences.
And if that's not enough there's always the
music of Richard Strauss, gorgeous and alluring in its own right, as
well as forming a bridge between the words and the deeper intentions of the
work; like Capriccio, making a clever self-referential commentary at
the same time on its working methods and intentions. Director Katie Mitchell is also used to working with divisions between form and content
and trying to find ways to bridge them in her stage productions. One
other divide you will also find Mitchell tackling is the male/female
divide in classic works, seeing to offer a 'corrective' to their
traditional male-dominated bias. How will Ariadne auf Naxos stand up to
such scrutiny?
A one-note joke or not, there is a
certain boldness in how Ariadne auf Naxos turns its gaze on the process
of opera and performance, in how it marries popular entertainment with
high art, and it's obviously necessary for that marriage to be seen to be
successful and mutually beneficial, but certain structural and
ideological weaknesses remain that need to be addressed. Regardless of
whether you agree with or find musical value in Strauss and
Hofmannsthal's somewhat nostalgic neoclassical idealisation of opera's
past, and some of the reactionary attitudes towards men and women that
persist within it, there is at least the structural disjoint in Ariadne
auf Naxos's division between Prologue and Opera.
Forced
to adopt this as a fix after the failure to pair the operatic element
with Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' in the original 1912 version,
the two parts don't sit perfectly well with one another either in the
reworked 1916 version. Once the Prologue is out of the way, the dispute
between the artists and the entertainers over how to simultaneously
present their different perspectives because of the whim of the Richest
Man in Vienna resolved by compromising artistic integrity for
commerce, the meta-theatrical framing is largely forgotten about. Even
though the contrasting dialectic remains at the heart of the work, it
does tend to forget its original audience (the guests of the Richest
Man in Vienna) and seems to start taking itself rather seriously
presenting itself to the 'real' audience as a neoclassical drama/music
theatre revue with a grand Wagnerian ending.
You could
look at that as intentional, as the work itself taking on its own
artistic life, removing itself from the framework of the craft, from the
personalities and problems of its creation to become something that
relates directly to an audience without any necessity of explanation or
commentary, and if so, it's another level of cleverness. It does tend
to make the intention of any director seeking to insert another level of
remove or abstraction on the work rather more difficult, but it has
been done, most successfully I believe in Katharina Thoma's 2013 Glyndebourne production.
Katie Mitchell's response to the work, in collaboration with Martin
Crimp, doesn't seem to have quite as much to offer.
The
immediate intention of their Aix production seems to be to make that
divide between creativity and creation visible again, but also to show
how they are brought together through an audience. It's a worthwhile
endeavour, certainly central to the premise of opera, and in the process
Mitchell and Crimp also find a way to draw the Prologue back once again
with the Opera. Rather than remaining invisible in this version of the
opera, since they don't have any part to play in Ariadne auf Naxos (or
'Ariadne auf Naxos'), the Richest man in Vienna, his wife and guests
remain seated throughout in this production to the left of the stage
while the players perform for them on the right. Occasionally, they
make comments on the performance (a role they performed in the first
version), and in one or two places are drawn in to participate or get
closer to the drama. When the opera finishes, it's indoor fireworks
that are set off and the performers put on their party hats and take a
bow to their on-stage audience. It brings the work full circle in a way
that Strauss and Hofmannsthal neglected to do and for which they could
be justifiably be criticised.
That's fine as far as it
goes, but obviously Katie Mitchell will have other issues with Ariadne
auf Naxos as it stands, not least of which is the pomposity that is
allowed to remain in the performance of the opera seria part of 'Ariadne
auf Naxos'. Whether you agree that Strauss got carried away and
forgot about it supposedly being a pastiche, it's clear nonetheless
that the musical composition is much more considered than clever,
Strauss fully aware of the variety of musical forms and techniques
employed and how they interrelate with the drama. What is harder to
swallow is how men and women are depicted, where the women are waiting
for a man, "a new god", who even though he may be unfaithful is better
than nothing and necessary to deliver them from their loneliness and
misery. It depends how you play it obviously, and with how much tongue
in the cheek.
Katie Mitchell is obviously not going to
have any of that, or leave any room for ambiguity. In her version,
Ariadne is pregnant, and it's the delivery of the baby - which takes
place on-stage - that is the birth of a new god, Bacchus. Where this
leaves the real Bacchus in the opera I'm not entirely sure, he could be
Theseus returned or Hermes, the messenger from the Gods who delivers her
this 'gift'. It's very much one of those feminist twists that Mitchell
can employ that seem unnecessary and don't always work terribly well
(Miranda, Lucia di Lammermoor), but here I liked how it deflated the
grand Wagnerian sweep accompanying the woman finding her man. The
playing out of the drama within a dining room instead of a desert island
also helps in that regard, reminding you that it all remains a
theatrical construct.
Some of it works and some of it
doesn't, but what works and what doesn't will obviously depend on the
individual viewer. The role reversal dressing of the richest man in
Vienna in a dress and his wife in a suit felt gratuitous and unnecessary
to me, and I felt that Zerbinetta's role and the risk of her appearing
to be a bimbo may have been underplayed, allowing the Ariadne storyline
to dominate, but the "discussion" between Zerbinetta and the Composer in
the Prologue is touching, all credit to Sabine Devieilhe and Angela Brower. What really makes it come alive here however is the fine
musical performance of the Orchestre de Paris under Marc Albrecht,
playing down the propensity for the work to seem overblown or just too
damn clever, finding instead the incredible variety of expression within
it.
That incredible variety also extends to the singing
roles in Ariadne auf Naxos, and the cast assembled here are outstanding.
Lise Davidsen is not the most natural actress, but less can be more
for Strauss, particularly when you can express everything so well
through the voice. Davidsen is just superb, carrying gravity and a
commanding vocal presence that is just extraordinarily rich and
expressive in her hold and control and swelling of a line. Sabine Devieilhe doesn't have quite the same volume but is an appropriately
flighty and bird-like Zerbinetta, and always impressive. If her
presence isn't given the same stature in Mitchell's production, she
remains dignified and 'luminous' in her eye-catching dress. Eric Cutler's Bacchus may also be given shorter shrift here, but his singing
is clear and lyrical. Angela Brower also makes a very favourable
impression as the Composer.
Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, ARTE Concert
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
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
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Clemenza di Tito
Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, 2014
Kirill Petrenko, Jan Bosse, Toby Spence, Kristine Opolais, Tara Erraught, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Angela Brower, Tareq Nazmi
Staatsoper.tv Live Internet Streaming, 16 February 2014
The intentions of Jan Bosse's production of La Clemeneza di Tito for the Bavarian State Opera can be - like most Munich productions - difficult to decipher. Fortunately - and thankfully mostly down to some pruning of Metastasio's libretto for Mozart's version - the purpose and moral of La Clemenza di Tito is not at all difficult to fathom. In terms of the complex nature of the relationships between the characters, yes, there are the usual Metastasian coincidences and cruel twists of fate, but essentially the underlying sentiment is as clear as the title of the opera itself. It's all about the virtue of mercy, clemency, understanding and love for one's fellow man.
If a production can get that essential point across, even if the manner of presenting it isn't the most expressive, then that's really what counts. And in this particular work, perhaps more so than elsewhere, that relies very much on how well attuned the production is to Mozart's music. That's because while Metastasio's libretto for La Clemenza di Tito is very much a classical text - the libretto having already been set to music by some of the most notable composer's of 18th century Baroque opera seria - it's very much transformed and enhanced in this particular instance by the hand of Mozart.
The circumstances of the writing of La Clemenza di Tito are well-documented. The composer's final opera was composed as a commission for the coronation of Leopold II in Prague in 1791. Written in haste and completed in only 18 days to a pre-existing libretto (adapted and reduced to two acts by the poet Caterino Mazzola), the composer assisted by his pupil Süssmayr (who actually only worked on recitatives, and even then those were corrected by Mozart), the composition of La Clemenza di Tito bears all the hallmarks of a rush-job done on autopilot. Even if that were true, Mozart on autopilot is no minor matter, but there is considerably more of the composer's beautiful soul and sensibility in the work that might be apparent within the restrictions of the opera seria form.
It's this quality that Mozart himself brings to the work that it is important to keep in mind when considering La Clemenza di Tito and perhaps that is the intention of the director here. Even though the stage set is a curved forum in the style of the Capitol in Rome at the time of Titus Vespasianus, the costumes are closer to the late 18th century period of Mozart's time. It's worth noting that some figures in period costume with powdered wigs, also take up place at the side of the stage to emphasise this and that the orchestra itself takes their place in the pit as if it's a lower level of the stage. There's not much made of this afterwards, but some elements are brought out further on one or two occasions to add to the effect and remind you that it is by Mozart, that it's an entertainment and that it was meant for a specific audience.
One example is during Sesto's Act I 'Parto, ma tu ben mio' aria. The most conflicted character in the opera, it's Sesto (urged on admittedly by the rather less conflicted Vitellia) who is unable to recognise the more open, kinder nature that sets Titus apart from how rulers are expected to behave. The importance of this character, and the need to show the complexity of his nature and how it is affected by the conflict in his position, is vital to the work. Just so that you don't miss how Mozart scores this aria with some beautiful obbligato clarinet, the musician is brought up onto the stage also. It tells us that we should have some sympathy for Sesto's predicament to the work Mozart. Attention is drawn to the music in this way on several other occasions, in Vitellia's important 'Non piu di fiori' aria not significantly here with a softer fortepiano accompaniment for the recitatives of Titus rather than the usual harpsichord continuo.
Other than that however, there's not much else that is notable about the stage direction or Stéphane Laimé's set design, or much variation between the two acts other than, evidently, the second part taking place in what are now the burnt ruins of the forum. There's one other nice touch at the start of Act II when the action starts without the orchestra being in the pit. Annio actually has to walk down into the pit and play the harpsichord himself to the recitativo secco. It seems to emphasise that the characters can't live, can't exist, and can't really be fully brought to life without Mozart's music there to draw it out.
The singing is evidently just as important when it comes to expression of the sentiments and the themes in the work. Kristine Opolais was the only performer that seemed less comfortable with the particular demands of the Mozartian soprano tessitura. She's a fine soprano and sings well, but is clearly uncomfortable with the high coloratura and the challenge of the sudden drops to the lower end that characterise Vitellia. Toby Spence however proves to have the ideal kind of voice for lovely soft, lyrical tenor that we expect for Titus, and he has all the necessary warmth as well. Sesto, of course is a key role and Tara Erraught performed well. Sesto's arias in particular were handled with great sensitivity for the conflicting sentiments and an awareness of his underlying nature. I was impressed by Angela Brower's Annio - and not just for playing her own accompaniment - but Hanna-Elisabeth Müller's Servilia and Tareq Nazmi's Publio were also of note.
For all the good points about the singing and for the attention given to emphasising the importance of Mozart's score, the production nonetheless never really managed to match the nobility of spirit or find the necessary warmth that characterises the best performances of this work. The fault would seem to lie with the actual stage direction, which was mostly static, with lots of standing around and little on-stage activity (other than a few close-up video projections and the huge conflagration at the end of Act I) to break it up. Kirill Petrenko's conducting and the delicate playing of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester captured the delicate transparency of Mozart's scoring, but it failed to connect with the narrative drive of the dramatic action in the way that it should.
