Strauss - Salome (Ghent, 2025)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, 2025

Alejo Pérez, Ersan Mondtag, Allison Cook, Thomas Blondelle, Angela Denoke, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Denzil Delaere, Linsey Coppens, Daniel Arnaldos, Hugo Kampschreur, Timothy Veryser, Hyunduk Kim, Marcel Brunner, Reuben Mbonambi, Leander Carlier, Igor Bakan

OperaVision - 16th January 2025

The German theatre director Ersan Mondtag, should his opera work become more regularly produced and distributed, looks likely to become someone worth following. Already noted for his work on Franz Schreker's Der Schmied von Ghent at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr at Staatsoper Hamburg and on Rued Langgaard's Antikrist for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, whether he provides any great insights into those works or not, the fact that he works with challenging pieces of a certain character is reason enough to take notice. That and the fact that he clearly has a very distinctive and colourful approach to opera direction, as is evidenced again here in another production of a very challenging work that he has undertaken for the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Richard Strauss's Salome.

Extravagantly staged, with not too much in the way of personal re-interpretation, the only way I can describe Ersan Mondtag's visual look for the Flanders production of Salome is that it seems to appeal more to the feel of the Gothic otherworldliness of Oscar Wilde's Symbolist dramatic poetry in appearance and mood. It doesn't hold to any Biblical context or appear to hint at any modern day commentary. Rather, it has a fairy-tale look that seems to inhabit the same dark mystical world of Pelléas et Mélisande’s Allemonde or Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle; which is to say a world of dark mystery and eroticism with an underlying threat of menace and violence, it explores dark corners of forbidden desire that can't be easily brought out or expressed rationally or in any more familiar human terms.

Wilde and Strauss's faithful German version of this struggle with forbidden desires is marked between the corrupt, twisted lust of Salome which pits itself against the steadfast moral purity of John the Baptist, or Jokanaan. It's not clear from this production that Ersan Mondtag takes any new, original or even discernible position on this. That fact is borne out by a short production video on the OperaVision site where the two Salomes for this production run, Allison Cook and Astrid Kessler, both have different views on the nature of the Princess, the former seeing her as a "victim" the other a "brat". Mondtag doesn't seem to come down on one side or the other, nor indeed really have any contribution to make or contemporary resonance on the work, unlike say the recent Tcherniakov Hamburg or the Christof Loy Helsinki productions. Or at least no overt contemporary reference. The programme notes suggest that the director "sees parallels between the historical Herod, vassal of the Roman Empire, and contemporary dictators such as Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko", but I'm not sure you would come to this conclusion independently.

The set may in fact distract from drawing any such allusion, but Herod's castle with its huge statues carved out of stone, demonic murals and opening to a dungeon certainly has a bold and menacing appearance. Impressive looking, it illustrates the scene well in terms of a kind of banality in its dull expression of a brutal controlling regime where corruption is indulged, even celebrated. It's a grey, dusty world of stone, Herod's militaristically dressed troops pale and colourless. Even Narraboth is not distinguished from the surrounding dullness, although Herodias's Page wears black. Only Salome and Jokanaan stand out against this forbidding background, Salome with fiery red hair in long blood red split leg robe, and Jokanaan austere and pale as ivory, undoubtedly from his imprisonment in the dark dungeon at the lower level of the castle, wearing a loin cloth and bright purple robe.

With a kind of Gothic Soviet brutalism on the outside, the second scene of the opera revolves to present a contrasting decadent brothel-like world of the interior court of Herod, the disputing Jews all grey bald pointy headed and alien-like, the women in grotesque grey costumes with pointed hoods. Herod comes in a fat bodysuit, a wonderfully irreverent caricature of a Lukashenko-like leader. In this environment Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils really comes to life and extends outward, the dreamlike fairy-tale fantasy imagery of obscene naked body suited dancers extending Salome's desire for Jokanaan and entwining itself with Herodias's nightmare and offstage screams of horror. Along with Herod's lustful desires, it blends together the fevered atmosphere of the combined lusts, fears and desires of all assembled.

It's the best part of this production, making the most of the music Strauss composed for this section and it ties in well with the scene of wholesale slaughter that seems to be the only natural outcome for this decadent regime at the always shocking climax of the opera. These key scenes might be the best part of the production design, where the choreography and direction all have something more to offer, but elsewhere Mondtag's direction remains in complete accordance with the score and its performance here at Opera Ghent. Conducted by Alejo Pérez, it's dark and seductive where it ought to be, luring you in, but hinting at the dangers to come in flashes of decadent dissonance and menace such as the deep rumble of the "rustling of giant wings".

Just as critical to the work as a whole are the singing performances and we really have some terrific singing here from an excellent cast, conveying all the extremes of the expressions of secret taboo lusts and the corruption of power. Allison Cook is excellent throughout as Salome but really comes into her own in the final scene, sung exceptionally well. In an interview she describes the need to approach the role like a marathon, demanding stamina and the ability to build the role up in stages. That technique is very much in evidence here and works powerfully, throwing herself completely into the character and reality of the horror she has wrought.

There is perhaps more of a hand of a director in this production then in the defining of characters, or at least that's the way it seems from how well each of the performers make an impression in their acting and singing roles. Jokanaan of course remains an enigma, an object of lust as well one of moral purity that only reflects or highlights the corruption of the soul that has fermented in this hypocritical and repressive society that indulges it own vices while condemning others, and perhaps that's really what Michael Kupfer-Radecky's performance succeeds in revealing here. Thomas Blondelle is also excellent as Herod, again making a real presence and contribution to the intent of the work as a whole, and it's great to see the Angela Denoke giving her customary fearless performance as Herodias. 

External links: OperaVision, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen 

Reimann - Lear (Munich, 2021)

Aribert Reimann - Lear

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2021

Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christoph Marthaler, Christian Gerhaher, Angela Denoke, Ausrine Stundyte, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Georg Nigl, Andrew Watts, Matthias Klink, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Ivan Ludlow, Jamez McCorkle, Brenden Gunnell, Graham Valentine, Dean Power, Marc Bodnar

Bayerische Staatsoper TV - 30 May 2021

There aren't many late 20th century operas that have made such an impact as Aribert Reimann's Lear, a modern opera that has had around 30 productions since its creation in the 1978. And impact is an appropriate and apposite word to describe this extraordinary and still most challenging of operas, a work that is nothing less than an assault on the senses. Some might find that true of most modern opera, but when it comes to adapting this darkest and most violent of Shakespeare's plays - one that Verdi had ambitions to write but never achieved - it's an opera should shake you to the core. Reimann's Lear is indeed - in the best possible meaning of the term - an assault on the senses.

What is also extraordinary about the opera is how much it remains close to the original in text, tone and theme, a challenging work with a diverse cast of characters each with their own motives, character and personality. It retains as much as possible of the two almost distinct story-lines, Lear and his daughters on one hand Gloucester and his sons on the other, each one informing and enhancing the themes of the other. It's all there in the opera, right down to all the notable lines straight out of the play and, in this concentrated form, you'd be hard pressed to think of anything significant that has been cut.

What is even more extraordinary is how Reimann's music enhances the dramatic intensity of the original. In the play, much depends on a director's or actor's interpretation on how the characters come to life, how they interact, what they generate between them. Reimann is wholly the director here and scores those personalities even more intensely into the vocal lines. Few characters are more formidable in drama than Regan and Goneril, and in Reimann's version they are even more stridently terrifying creations, made all the more so by the layering of vocal lines in a way that cannot be done in the theatre, doubling the voices and thereby concentrating and intensifying the drama.

Given all that, Shakespeare and Reimann combined on a work as dark, dramatic and powerful as Lear, is it any wonder that director Christoph Marthaler decides that it needs no further dramatic intervention from him. Although that does seem to be a guiding principle for this director, preferring to offer a contrasting new element on top of the work rather than seek to provide mere dramatic illustration, he's not wrong with adopting that approach in this work. Whether what he brings to it has any merit or indeed interest is a matter of taste and interpretation, but you would hope at least that it doesn't get in the way of the inherent force of the work.

Some might think however that he does fail to adequately present the work on the stage, but at the very least one thing you could count on with Marthaler is that it would not be like any other production and be completely unpredictable, if not even barely comprehensible. He doesn't disappoint on that front. If you can reduce the concept down to a brief description, Anna Viebrock’s stage set is based on the Museum of Natural History in Basel, and Lear is a collector of insects who likes to preserve the past, viewing his own subjects and family as if they were exhibits pinned to a board.

Hence at the start of the Bayerische Staatsoper's 2021 production - with a live audience back after the most recent Covid-19 lockdown - we see a museum guide or scientist showing a small group of visitors the exhibits of the Lear family all mounted in glass display cases in a room of the museum. Other eccentric ways of complementing the drama follow, but hardly bear up to any real scrutiny or commentary. In the first half, Goneril and Regan's dismissal of Lear and his retinue is done by opening boxes of perfume and spraying it in their direction, while in the second half the cast are largely confined within transport cases and cupboards.

If Marthaler doesn't directly engage with the opera however, Reimann's score is certainly capable of presenting the subject on its own terms. It's the sound of a world descending into disorder and madness. Not just one old man's personal decline but all the beliefs, certainties and securities that we have held - even the order of tonality - being cast aside and utterly destroyed in halftones, quartertones and a barrage of thunderous percussion. It's literally the end of the world as we know it; the destruction of hope, of faith in humanity, the sound of despair and regret at the realisation of the reality, the truth about the nature of people revealed, the horror that people can inflict on one another and the depths to which they will stoop out of greed and self interest. It's the nature of the modern world laid bare.

Sadly there is little evidence of that in Marthaler's production, which actually seems to go out of its way to lessen the impact. Fair enough, you might not need to see the gory detail of Gloucester's bloody eye sockets, but putting two glass spheres onto Georg Nigl's eyes does not provoke the essential visceral response that the situation - and Reimann's scoring of it - uses to demonstrate the horrors that man (and woman) are capable of inflicting on one another. There might not be a whole lot Marthaler has to say about Lear, and there may indeed not be a whole lot more that anyone can add that isn't already there to its fullest in Shakespeare and Reimann, but interpretation is of course still an essential part of any opera performance and I was particularly looking forward to hearing the fine cast assembled for this production.

The singing at least tries its best to deliver the magnificent dark poetry of the text and the music that maximises its impact. Christian Gerhaher as Lear and Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as Cordelia are both excellent, doing their best to overcome the largely neutral inexpressive stage direction. Gerhaher manages to be typically lyrical while still describing the horror of his experience, but is still somewhat held back by the direction. Rather more successful since they have great roles to sing no matter what, Ausrine Stundyte is typically impressive as Regan and Angela Denoke suitably dramatic as Goneril, her unsteady and erratic pitch actually suiting Reimann's slides into horrific dissonance. Matthias Klink is outstanding as Edgar/Poor Tom.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper TV

Janáček - Kátja Kabanová (Vienna, 2017)

Leoš Janáček - Kátja Kabanová

Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017

Tomáš Netopil, André Engel, Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Misha Didyk, Jane Henschel, Angela Denoke, Leonardo Navarro, Thomas Ebenstein, Margaret Plummer, Marcus Pelz, Ilseyar Khayrullova, Caroline Wenbourne

Staatsoper Live - 27th April 2017

In some ways the tale of Kátja Kabanová fits the opera template perfectly, not least in its story of a tragic heroine who is destroyed by the hypocrisy of the society around her. Janáček's treatment of Ostrovsky's drama 'The Storm' however is a rather more unconventional opera in terms of its dramatic structure and musical arrangements. Perhaps no more so than any of the composer's other operas, it nonetheless has a unique blend of elements that is distinctly Janáček; the music incorporating folk elements, its rhythms and vocal lines matching those of the spoken voice, creating a unique fusion between the characters and the society around them as well as giving expression to the composer's own personal life experiences.

More than simply play along a conventional line of dramatic points, Kátja Kabanová attempts to let the essence of the experience arise naturally out of a number of little episodes. It's an evocation of time and place, specifically a small provincial village on the Volga in Russia around 1860, but as the issue isn't forced, it's possible to recognise the more universal qualities that can relate to other similar situations, particularly in the context of a young woman feeling hemmed in by a loveless marriage and the pressures of social expectation that restrict free expression of her own personality.

It could easily be relocated then to other times and places. The first time I saw the opera staged was in Paris in 2004, where Christoph Marthaler's production (originating from the 1998 Salzburg Festival) depicted the drama and the social oppression as one existing in an old Soviet tenement block, the Volga a fountain in the courtyard. Robert Carsen, by way of extreme contrast made the Volga the centre of the drama, filling the whole stage with water, the romantic free flowing river reflecting Kátja inner nature while also serving as a grim and constant reminder of the stagnation of her own waterlogged life.

André Engel's production of Kátja Kabanová for the Vienna State Opera sets the drama in what looks like a poor East European immigrant community in New York sometime in the first half of the 20th century. The Volga that Vána Kudrjás admires at the start of the opera, in what is one of only a few stranger twists applied to permit the relocation to work, is actually a bottle of imported Russian vodka. Corresponding locations to the Russian village of the original are not hard to find in this city setting, with a grim tenement block the home of the small immigrant community, a rooftop location the place for her secret assignation with Boris, a yard to shelter from a thunderstorm and a back alley leading to the river all filling in adequately for the original locations.

It's not a spectacular set - it's certainly nothing like Carsen's drowned world - but it does speak of the impoverished life lived by these people. Not necessarily in monetary terms - although there is very much a distinction and class snobbery that divides the business men and the ordinary people - but in spiritual terms also. In another of similar contrasts or paradox, religion also determines behaviour in this community, but there is very little that is spiritual about it, religious morality being used hypocritically on the part of Dikój and Kabanicha to satisfy their own particular desires or ambitions and put down those who they accuse of not measuring up to expectations.

The production at least highlights these social divisions as the cause of Kátja's unrest by putting a little more emphasis in certain places. Dikój and Kabanicha's little affair is shown to be a little more sordid, Kátja's prayers are made before a priest, and the guilt and accusations that she applies to herself in Act III are emphasised by her oppressors appearing nightmare-like dressed in mourning black to haunt her. Kátja's tragedy is that she places too much faith and trust in practices employed by these hypocrites that are used to repress her true and better nature. It's not Kátja who throws herself into the Volga but her accusers who urge her on, as they would have done in with adulterers in the past. Kabanicha's disrespect for the drowned young woman in this production adds another level of shock to an already dark ending.

Tomáš Netopil also finds the darker edge that lies in the music but also recognises that Janáček's music is not so plainly descriptive of the drama or even one single underlying mood, but carries within it a number of contrasting emotions. The choral refrains of folk songs in the final scene are haunting but also beautiful, reflecting the contradictions within Kátja's mind, longing to be free as a bird, but caught in the pull of the flow of the Volga. The musical performance matches the impassive realism of the work, which is restrained and interiorised, binding those contradictory sentiments to the world and the society that gives rise to them.

Although it is effective in its own way, the slight over-emphasis of the production doesn't bind itself to the drama quite as well as the music. Neither does the singing. Interestingly for me, this production has the same Kátja and Kabanicha's as the Paris production I saw 13 years ago; too long ago to assess how Angela Denoke and Jane Henschel compare in those roles now. Certainly Henschel still cuts a formidable figure as Kátja's tormentor, but Angela Denoke on this performance alone is less than ideal. Although reaction tends to be mixed to some of her recent performances, she is still be a force to be reckoned with when dredging up deep emotional turmoil in characters like Kundry and Alceste. She characterises Kátja well, but her pitch is too wild and erratic to sustain the flow of Janáček's vocal writing and its relationship to the music. Misha Didyk's voice can also be something of an acquired taste and it doesn't always work for every role, but he is a good Boris, singing the role with all that pitiful romantic passion that is helpless against the social order and ineffectual when it comes to Kátja's dilemma.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live

Wagner - Parsifal (Vienna, 2015 - Webcast)

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Wiener Staatsoper, 2015

Adam Fischer, Christine Mielitz, Michael Volle, Stephen Milling, Johan Botha, Angela Denoke, Ryan Speedo Green, Boaz Daniel, Catherine Trottmann, Hyuna Ko, Jason Bridges, Peter Jelosits, Michael Roider, Ileana Tonca

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 5 April 2015
 
It strikes me that there are broadly three ways to approach a staging of Parsifal. You can do it straight traditional with knights in helmets, you can try to impose a more abstract interpretation of the meaning of the work, or you can try to find some middle way that is more attuned to the mood of the piece rather than the letter of it. None of these ways is the 'right' way, none of them are entirely satisfactory, but all of them have something to offer. Such is the nature of Wagner's last opera, Parsifal, neither real world, fantasy nor purely conceptual either. Even 'opera' is an inadequate a word for it.

A consistent approach is made all the more difficult through the way that each of the three acts of the opera has its own distinct tone, each of the acts are linked, but there is no consistent narrative arc or even an underlying conceptual theme or philosophy that brings them together in any meaningful way. It's possible to impose one, highlighting the Christian imagery or looking for the sexual symbolism that runs through the work, but that usually runs into difficulties when it comes to purposefully tying it all together. It's probably better to take each of the three acts individually, find the precise tone that each of them require, and try to let that stand on its own terms.

You could, for example in the case of the Vienna State Opera production of Parsifal, spend a long time trying to work out what the purpose or meaning of the setting is in Act I alone. Monsalvat, the domain of the Grail, looks here like a fencing school where the knights hone their sword skills. Act II leaves that world behind for a living room where a rather less than demonic Klingsor lounges around on a sofa rather than directing forces against Parsifal from his tower. The domain of the Grail in Act III is a different place from the one in Act I, but much has changed in-between, even if we haven't followed it through in a straightforward linear narrative way. Time really has no meaning here.

What does have meaning here is the notion of a journey. Each Act is a stage along that journey, and, much like the three ways you can approach Wagner's opera itself, it makes a journey from real-world, to concept, to myth. Pinning those three stages down to any one interpretation or description isn't particularly helpful, and you could just as easily describe the journey across the three acts as one of innocence through reason leading to enlightenment; sin through repentance leading to salvation; birth through love leading to death (with rebirth implicit); or in its most simple form as waiting through action leading to an outcome. None of these holds true with any consistency or purity of purpose, but the pattern should emerge - and in Christine Mielitz's production it does so very clearly - even if the words/concepts used to describe it will be different for everyone.

Even within each of those individual three acts however, a similar three-stage pattern can be discerned, and the director here finds a way of emphasising and drawing that out, without necessarily imposing a reading on the audience. In Act I alone, for example, the slow opening clearly shows a world in waiting, its people in pain, the knights seeking purpose, gearing themselves for action. Whether you find it meaningful or not, a fencing school does at least give this sense of preparation, of the young knights seeking the wisdom of its elders like Gurnemanz. Interestingly, fitting in with the whole nature of the contradictions within Wagner's philosophical outlook, the spur to action here comes from a holy fool, an innocent who sins in the killing of a swan.

The key moment in Act I however is the leap taken to the third stage - myth, enlightenment, transformation, death - whatever you want to call it. It occurs in Parsifal when Gurnemanz invites him to take that extraordinary journey through time and space. In Christine Mielitz's production, the Christian symbolism is used to spark off recognition of the mystery of transubstantiation, the knights physical needs met through the dispensing of bread, their spiritual strength found in the sight of the grail (deliberately not made visible as a physical object as such here), their fight to continue with their purpose both a literal and a symbolic one. Parsifal is profoundly affected by his witnessing this act of faith and mystery, and Wagner's scoring of it is just some of the most extraordinary music ever composed.

The impact and importance of the act, and the patterns within it, is brilliantly established in this first Act in the Vienna production. Similar attention is given to the respective journeys in Act II (Kundry - 'Bekenntnis wird Schuld in Reue enden, Erkenntnis in Sinn die Torheit wenden' - 'Confession will end guilt with remorse, And the knowledge will turn folly into sense') and in Act III, cumulatively building towards the End itself with its gravity, quiet glory and transcendental healing redemption in death with the promise of rebirth in a dimension beyond time and space. Even as it finds a concrete form to express the action of each of the three acts, in as far as any of them have any real action, the direction leaves interpretation open. You settle on one interpretation to the exclusion of others and to the loss of the totality and the enduring mystery of Parsifal as a whole.

I don't know if the staging and direction are the determining factors here, or how much of a part Adam Fischer's soaring musical direction of the work plays, but this was a different kind of performance from Johan Botha from the other Parsifals I've heard him sing. His voice has darkened somewhat, there's more gravity in his delivery, and a greater engagement with the character in his demeanour. Botha is never a strong actor, but the director seems to be able to work to his strengths by not getting him to act at all. With this voice, he doesn't need to. Angela Denoke is much the same here as in her other performances of Kundry, scarcely able to keep her slight slip on as usual, fiercely committed in her performance, but inconsistent in her singing. Her pitch becomes increasingly wayward as Act II progresses, but Denoke never fails to bring a sense of compassion (another important characteristic for Parsifal) to Kundry in the third act.

We had another familiar and capable Parsifal performer in Stephen Milling's Gurnemanz, while Michael Volle impressively adds another Wagnerian role to to his recent Hans Sachs in the Met's Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg, with a notable Amfortas. Klingsor needs a little more drama and force than Daniel Boaz can manage, but there was little else wrong with his performance. This was a strong, experienced cast who seemed to adapt well to the considered direction of Christine Mielitz, and with Adam Fischer managing Wagner's sublime score masterfully from the pit, this was every bit as warm and uplifting as an Easter Parsifal should be.

Parsifal was broadcast live on Easter Sunday from the Vienna State Opera as part of their Live at Home programme. This month sees a new production of ELEKTRA with Nina Stemme on the 11th April, Elīna Garanča in DER ROSENKAVALIER on the 12th April and L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI on the 30th April. May sees Juan Diego Flórez in DON PASQUALE, Plácido Domingo in NABUCCO and the beginning of Sven-Eric Bechtolf's production of DER RING DES NIEBELUNGEN, 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

Wagner - Parsifal (Royal Opera House, 2014 - Blu-ray)

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Royal Opera House, London - 2013

Antonio Pappano, Stephen Landridge, Simon O'Neill, Angela Denoke, Gerald Finley, René Pape, Willard White, Robert Lloyd, Dušica Bijelić, Rachel Kelly, Sipho Fubesi, Luis Gomes, Celine Byrne, Kiandra Howarth, Anna Patalong, Anna Devin, Ana James, Justina Gringyte, David Butt Philip, Charbel Mattar

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Richard Wagner's Parsifal is a work of supreme brilliance, the final work of a musical genius. It's the summation of a career that marked the highest achievement in the world of opera not only up to that point, but it's debatable whether it has ever been surpassed. More than just standing as one of the greatest works of opera ever composed however, it's also a work of art that is practically a philosophical summation of everything it means to be a human, suffering in an imperfect world while searching for meaning and a higher sense of purpose. Musically, the work even seems to go beyond itself and expand into another realm or dimension that lies outside conventional space and time, and it can even take the listener there with it. If you've experienced Parsifal, you'll understand that is not hyperbole.

No pressure then for any opera house who has to put it on and live up to such high expectations. While there are ideological problems and contradictions inherent within Parsifal, there is at the same time a degree of openness to interpretation in how to present a work that is far from conventional and difficult to stage as a traditional opera that makes it an intriguing prospect, but there are dangers in trying to pin it down to any one meaning. It's perhaps unreasonable then to expect anyone to have anything new to add to what is inherently great in itself, just that the work be allowed to weave its magic. As such, it's hard to find any fault with the Royal Opera House's 2013 production of Parsifal, but inevitably some parts fare better than others.

In terms of just the pure performance of the work and indeed the purity of the performance, the concept, the casting, the attention to meaning in the musical detail and the manner in which every element of the work contributes to the piece as a single interlocking whole, everything about this production is well-considered and judged to near-perfection. Every element brings out the quality of Wagner's writing to its fullest expression and is performed with passion, purpose and complete commitment. Other than René Pape singing Gurnemanz, the cast might not have been the Wagnerian's first-choice for these roles, but my goodness, they all perform like they ought to be.

Most extraordinary of all is Angela Denoke, who gives an utterly magnetic performance, seemingly possessed with the spirit of Kundry. Kundry is evidently no ordinary woman but something mythical and superhuman, so it's a bit much to expect anyone to really embody this character to the extent that Wagner developed her but... well, there you go, Denoke is something of a phenomenon here. It's such a strong and committed performance, from a vital central role, that it anchors all the others - not that they aren't spectacular in their own right. Gerald Finley feels the pain as Amfortas, director Stephen Landridge working with this aspect of the work as the driving force for the stage conceptualisation. Finley's singing is as smooth, precise and as measured as his Hans Sachs for Glyndebourne, but perhaps just a little too calculated. Combined with the pain of the grail itself (a new idea of which more anon) and the pain of Kundry's long, troubled existence that Denoke takes to a new dimension, it all serves to underpin the central concept in a variety of complementary ways.

Simon O'Neill might not quite have the character or the acting ability to lift Parsifal up to a similar level, but you can't really find any serious fault his singing or his unstinting commitment here. He gives it everything and perhaps over-expresses when sometimes a singer just needs to surrender to the role. His stamina however is impressive, and he doesn't just hold firm and steady throughout, but finds near-impossible reserves to keep up a consistent level of performance across the almost four hours that the role of Parsifal calls for. You know that you can rely on that level of professionalism and consistency from René Pape as Gurnemanz and we aren't disappointed. I'd say we get even a little more from Pape this time around, particularly in his third act performance as a shuffling near-broken knight who finds his long suffering and his faith have been rewarded. It's all there in those finely sung lines and Pape delivers them with self-contained dignity.

Knights of the Grail are there in name only in Stephen Landridge's abstract-modern production, all of them wearing immaculate grey suits rather than suits of armour. The staging is a little bit cold and clinical in this respect, Alison Chitty's symmetrical geometric stage design dominated by a large cube that serves principally as a hospital room for the bed where Amfortas was being looked after by concerned doctors. The use of lights and sometimes projections however also use the cube to reveal backstory elements in flash-frames and live-action slow motion. Nothing should overwhelm the senses more than the music or the expression in the singing in Parsifal, and every element here seemed well-judged to suggest and engage the audience rather than over-emphasise or impose a false reading. The bloody depiction of Klingsor's auto-castration, for example, is a strong image, but it ties into the sense of pain, of the image of sick world in need of healing that is there throughout the work and brought out in Landridge's production. And it must be said, brought out also in Willard White's performance and his presence throughout much of the second act.

Landridge's production continually engages with imagery that relates very closely to the original stage directions, but with a distinct twist that makes you re-examine what it all means. Most striking (and controversial) of all is the image of the Grail itself. There might be an inward rolling of the eyes when the cube opens up at the behest of the knights to reveal that the Grail is actually a child wearing nothing but a loin cloth, but the sense of a sacrificial act and the question of blood - both so vital to the underlying message of Parsifal - as well as the sheer pain of Amfortas's role as the keeper of the Grail, is unquestionably intensified when the ritual involves the actual cutting of the child and spilling his blood for the faithful.

Such touches don't perhaps reveal any new vision for the work, but they certainly find a thought-provoking way to touch on the philosophical mysteries and the religious significance of the work without having to rely on over-used Christian imagery that has become detached from its original significance and meaning. The meaning of Parsifal may remain elusive but as Simon Callow succinctly put it in his perceptive commentary during the intervals when I viewed this at the cinema screening, it's really just about the world being in a mess and being healed by a return to innocence. The Royal Opera House's production, led from the pit by Antonio Pappano with attention to detail and with genuine feeling for the work's Good Friday message, ensures that it touches upon and brings together every aspect of the transcendent beauty of Wagner's great masterpiece.

On Blu-ray, the clinical qualities of the production design are perhaps made even more evident. The image quality in the High Definition transfer is however impressive, and it benefits considerably from the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix that warmly expresses the detail and the beauty of the orchestral playing. The BD is a two-disc set, with Act I and II on disc one, and Act III on disc two. There are only a few short features on the discs - a 6-minute Introduction to Parsifal that takes into account the production and the characters, and a five-minute piano run through of a scene from Act II between Simon O'Neill and Antonio Pappano. The booklet explains the significance and the intent of Alison Chitty and Stephen Landridge's production design, and there's a fascinating essay by Lucy Beckett on the writing of Parsifal, with reference to Wolfram von Eschenbach's 13th century text that serves as a basis of the libretto. 

Gluck - Alceste (Teatro Real, Madrid 2014 - Webcast)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Alceste

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2014

Ivor Bolton, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Angela Denoke, Paul Groves, Willard White, Magnus Staveland, Thomas Oliemans, Isaac Galán, Fernando Radó, María Miró, Rodrigo Álvarez

ARTE Concert - 7 March 2014

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. That's the principal behind Gluck's reformist operas, reducing the stories and the nature of operatic expression to their dramatic essence, without over-elaboration or ornamentation. It's also the case this time (mostly) with director Krzysztof Warlikowski in his production of Gluck's Alceste for the Teatro Real in Madrid, one of the final productions under the artistic direction of the late Gérard Mortier. Gluck's reform operas are not puritan or spartan, but they provide a strong musical and dramatic framework for creative artists to work with and that is what is largely achieved here.

For Warlikowski, the simple question that needs to be asked when approaching an ancient drama like Alceste is what is it essentially about. For the director it's "the most philosophical story ever written" that confronts the question "could you die for someone?". It's also a royal family drama. Taking that as a starting point and thinking of it in terms of how that story has modern-day universal relevance, it seems obvious to think of Princess Diana and the impact of her death, but can a modern-day tabloid story really be considered to be comparable with ancient mythology?

Surprisingly, by getting right back to the essence of what Alceste is all about, and bringing a strong artistic and creative impulse to bear upon the work, Warlikowski is able to make the parallel meaningful. Typically, the director sets the tone and lays out his ideas in a prologue before the opera starts. This time it involves a five-minute film that shows Angela Denoke's Alceste being interviewed Princess Diana-style, where she covers many of the same issues and problems revealed in TV interviews with Diana. In it, she frankly discusses the difficulties of being in the public eye, of being unable to cope, of her post-natal depression and her rumoured suicide attempts.

That might seem like it has little to do with Alceste offering her own life in sacrifice to Apollo in exchange for her husband King Admeto who has just died, but it does provide us with some kind of background character detail that is credible for someone in her position which may be relevant as far as understanding the decision she has taken. Controversially, Warlikowski also creates entirely new dialogues (in English) to fill out the kind of anguish, confusion and uncertainty Alceste feels and reveal how it tears at family bonds. The director even introduces Admeto's father as a speaking character, and if the dialogue doesn't really carry the same kind of poetic force as Gluck's score, the purpose is clear and no less effective.

It's perhaps not so clear from the set design, but the effectiveness of the treatment is evident from the powerful pay-off in the finale. The stage and set design are of course not exactly what you would expect for Alceste, Act I taking place at a hospital, while Act III is set in a morgue rather than in Hell. That, as you might also expect, is actually the least of Warlikowski's conceits, the director even introducing a gypsy dance for no discernible reason, but much of the strangeness can be related to the state of mind of an Alceste who wanders around in a daze, more suicidal in her grief than sacrificial. Hercules however is fairly bonkers as well here. The conclusion however, a wheelchair-bound locked-in Alceste with husband and children presenting a distorted view of "happy families" is however utterly devastating, its bleak realistic view contrasting with the (forced) happy end of Gluck's music.

Warlikowski isn't afraid to confront such questions and work with the score in this way, making full use of the dance music not for ballets but to play out the dramatic setting he has imposed on the opera. Unfortunately, the performances in this production aren't quite up to the vision of the director. Ivor Bolton conducts the 1776 Paris version of the work well enough, but I'm not convinced that the Madrid orchestra really have the precision and rhythm to hold down and bring out the dynamic of the score. The timing of the chorus also occasionally seems to be out of step with the music. Musically, Alceste is one of Gluck's finest pieces, and Bolton keeps the flow well in line with Warlikowski's dramatic focus on an Alceste who is caught up in a nightmare of grief and breakdown.

This Alceste therefore needs to be a strong actress, and Angela Denoke brings a great dramatic intensity to the role. The Baroque dramatic soprano range isn't always within her comfort zone, she's inconsistent and can sound shrill when striving to reach and hold the high notes, but there's no question she gives it everything. The same could be said about Willard White as the Grand Priest and Thanatos, not always secure on the lower register, but he's a strong presence nonetheless. Paul Groves however was a strong and lyrical Admeto, equally intense on a dramatic level alongside Denoke.

Links: ARTE Concert

Berg - Wozzeck

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2013

Lothar Koenigs, Andreas Kriegenburg, Simon Keenlyside, Angela Denoke, Roman Sadnik, Kevin Conners, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Wolfgang Bankl, Scott Wilde, Matthew Grills, Dean Power, Heike Grötzinger

Staatsoper.TV Internet steaming - 6th October 2013

It's hard to know how you should feel or quite by what criteria you judge the performance of any Alban Berg opera. Wozzeck, Berg's only completed opera (Lulu's third act remained unfinished at the time of his death), should I suppose be a painful experience and should gradually beat you down much in the same way that life does for its protagonist. The music too is by no means comforting or easy to listen to, but neither is it inaccessible or "difficult" in the way that Lulu's 12-tone serialism can often be. As a reflection of the drama, it's dark and unrelenting, and so too is the Bayerische's 2013 production directed by Andreas Kriegenburg and conducted by Lothar Koenigs.

Part of the problem with knowing quite what to make of Wozzeck and its protagonist undoubtedly stems from the fragmentary nature of the episodes in Georg Büchner's original unfinished manuscript. Wozzeck, we are told in the introduction to the Bayerische's production, is a good man who is ground down by the system, by the brutality, ignorance and hypocrisy of other people, by poverty, misery and illness, by life in general. But is he a good man, is he an innocent or is he simply a disturbed individual? It's difficult to tell, since he reacts angrily to Marie's infidelity but remains outwardly impassive to what goes on in relation to the abuse and exploitation of his nature and character by the Captain, the Doctor and the Drum Major. Until obviously, it all becomes too much and he finally cracks...

If there's any indication then just what the inner nature of Wozzeck is, it must be found in Berg's music. Here you have his personality, his confusion and his building anger, all in a way that makes rather more sense of the eventual violent release of his frustrations. And, yes, it tells you that Wozzeck is at heart a good man. Berg's music is a rich combination of sounds, melodies and voices, a genuinely free experimental attempt to redefine the structures of operatic language outside of the constrictions of the traditional or indeed the atonal language. There are no restrictions, old is mixed with new, the three acts of five scenes are each described as 'Character Pieces' (Act I), a 'Symphony in Five Movements' (Act II) and 'Six Inventions' (Act III) that employ a variety of musical forms and styles to cover the whole range of the subject. It truly is music in service of drama and character, not in service of music itself.

If a production engages with it in the way that it ought to, it should achieve the full impact of Wozzeck's terrible sequence of dramatic events. The three acts played straight through without intermission Andreas Kriegenburg's production and Harald B. Thor's sets unquestionably achieve that. Under predominately monochrome lighting the locations are almost invariably within damp, dank and misty and silver-blue moonlit settings capture the utter darkness and misery of the situation. They also give some indication of Wozzeck's mindset and even give premonitory hints of his eventual fate - Wozzeck spending most of the time with his feet soaking as he plods across the waterlogged stage.  There's practically no colour, the production team resisting the urge even to splash some red around.  There's a brief flame at one stage, but no sunsets and no blood.

You would however expect the stage and lighting to depict a rather dark and grim picture, so what is notable about the Bayerische's production is its division between interiors and exteriors that don't so much coincide with Wozzeck's actual location as to whether his mind is locked-in or outwardly expressive (and even then, his outward expressions are still somewhat dissociative). There is also a slightly greater role given over to Wozzeck and Marie's son, who remains mostly within the boxed room detached from the watery floor space that the others occupy. He is mostly silent but paints words on the wall on occasion ("Papa, Geld!, Hure" - Father, Money! and Slut) that heighten the sordidness of the situations and indicate that the child is not untouched by them.

All of this works with the nature of the work itself and doesn't over-complicate the character of the music or the singing performances which are just as vital an aspect. Again you can hardly judge the singing performances for their beauty of expression, but there are nonetheless great demands placed on all the performers and they cope well. Simon Keenlyside has considerable experience in the role of Wozzeck and is performing the role in several other productions this season. His performance here is, not unexpectedly, deeply intense, conveying as much through his posture and bearing as he does through his expressive singing. Angela Denoke is just as impressive as Marie, a thankless role of a character that is scarcely any less put-upon than Wozzeck, but this is a strong production all round, with the Bayerische's regular company singers all putting in solid performances as the work's gallery of grotesques.

Strauss - Salome

Richard Strauss - Salome

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 2011

Stefan Soltesz, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Angela Denoke, Alan Held, Kim Begley, Doris Soffel, Marcel Reijans, Jurgita Adamonyte

Arthaus

It’s somewhat difficult to grasp the nature of the concept behind director Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s 2011 production of Strauss’ Salome or understand quite how it works, but it is delivered so powerfully in this Festspielhaus Baden-Baden staging that it’s not so hard to get a sense that he’s doing something absolutely right. The best thing you can do – and this ought to come naturally anyway if it’s done properly – is just focus on the singing and the music of this extraordinary, ground-breaking work of opera and the rest will fall into place, even if you don’t really understand why. There’s certainly a sense of dislocation then when you initially view this production, which has none of the superficial visual reference points that you would normally associate with its biblical Judean setting, and little even of the stylised imagery of moonlight nights and shadows of death suggested by a text derived from Oscar Wilde’s beautifully decadent overwrought imagery. Yet, as the opera itself takes shape, the surroundings fall into the background and instead simply provide an appropriate environment with space that allows Richard Strauss’ music to take centre stage.

In some respects you can see Lehnhoff’s work here as an extension of his approach to the symphonic tone poems of his Strauss and Wagner productions, most notably in Parsifal and, as a companion piece to this work, his Baden-Baden production of Elektra. Partly, those productions are representative of an interior mindset – particularly the latter – but they also are abstractly expressive of the tones and textures of the music itself and the themes that arise from the subject. The fractured, slightly titled landscape here in Salome suggests a psychological imbalance, while the contrasts that are expressed in the music and the characters are reflected in the textures of the walls and floors of the unconventional stage arrangement, with a dark glossy reflective centre-stage surrounded by crumbling plaster, broken tiles and rotting whitewashed wooden panels.

It’s far from naturalistic, but then there’s nothing naturalistic about the situation or the aggressive music that pushes the boundaries of the tonal system. Strauss’ Salome (drawn from imagery suggested by the paintings of Gustave Moreau and elaborated on by Flaubert, Mallarmé and Wilde) is far from a straightforward biblical tale, but rather an expression of dark sexual pathology, of the fulfilment of dangerous desires, of obsession and lust, a lurid study of the power that those perverse drives confer on both the object and the subject of those desires and how it differentiates men and women. That dark fascination of this Liebestod situation and conflict is there in Strauss’ orchestration, the composer scoring directly in response to the flow and the tone of Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of Wilde’s drama, and the music is accordingly intense, intimate, perverse and disturbing, but with a romantic sweep that captures the grander epic nature of the lurid melodrama.

In his notes for the production – included in the booklet with the DVD/BD – Lehnhoff refers to the idea of the setting as taking place on the edge of a volcano. Whether this is meaningful to the viewer or not, it proves to be an effective analogy that not only suits the music and the drama, but gives it the appropriate space to work within without becoming over-imposing. Initially, the characters and the action take place on the outer rim of the stage, but gradually, as the focus of the drama and the music tightens on the nature of Salome, Jochanaan and Herod, the drama moves to the centre of this cauldron towards the centre piece Dance of the Seven Veils and a conclusion that shocked the censors back in 1905 and which still has a tremendous impact today. The tone of the production is vital to support the impact of these two key scenes, which should be dark, melancholy and perversely sordid as well as erotically suggestive, and that’s certainly the case here. The head of Jochanaan is also, I have to say, one of the most frighteningly realistic I’ve ever seen in a production of Salome. Theatrical prosthetics have come a long way over the years.

The approach to the tone of the drama and the music and how it is reflected is important, but equally as important is how it is interpreted. The cast assembled here for the Baden-Baden production deliver superb performances to match the attentive detail that is brought out of the score by the orchestra under Stefan Soltesz. Angela Denoke plays Salome as if she is in thrall to the bizarre situation and the potential that it suggests, and that suits the production perfectly. There’s a rising intensity in the performance that is in line with the score and she seems to be attuned to the slightest variations of tone within it. Alan Held is a rather more animated Jochanaan than others I have seen, less mystical and more of a firebrand prophet, and that works well with the heightened aggression on display. The singing is extremely good elsewhere, from Kim Begley as Herod and Doris Soffel as Herodias, but Marcel Reijans and Jurgita Adamonyte also make an impression in the smaller parts of Narraboth and the Page.

The Blu-ray from Arthaus is of the usual exceptionally high standards. The image is crystal clear to catch the full lighting, colour and contrasts of the set. The audio tracks are PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.0, breathtaking in High Definition clarity. This is really an amazing way to view and listen to this extraordinary work. The production, incidentally, is clearly a live performance, but there are no signs of an audience being present at the opening or close of this one-act opera – much like the Lehnhoff sister production of Elektra for Baden-Baden, already available on DVD. There are no extra features, but the booklet contains a good essay on the work, a full synopsis and notes on the production by the director. The disc is BD25, region-free, 1080i full-HD, subtitles are German, English, Italian, French, Spanish and Korean.