Wagner - Die Walküre (Brussels, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Die Walküre

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2024

Alain Altinoglu, Romeo Castellucci, Peter Wedd, Nadja Stefanoff, Ante Jerkunica, Gábor Bretz, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Ingela Brimberg, Karen Vermeiren, Tineke Van Ingelgem, Polly Leech, Lotte Verstaen, Katie Lowe, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, Iris van Wijnen, Christel Loetzsch

RTBF Auvio Streaming - 8th February 2024

It's hard to describe a Romeo Castellucci production in any way that makes logical or narrative sense, especially when you're only half-way though it. That's as far as we have got with his production of Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle at La Monnaie, and at this stage with Das Rheingold presented earlier this season, the most we can say after Die Walküre is that the focus is very much on tone rather than narrative. It's an approach that is designed to avoid the conventional imagery for one that marries spectacle worthy of the status of the mythology with an intent to delve deeper into the emotional and ideological nature of the work as expressed in the music. If there's a work that can sustain many layers it's Wagner's Ring and Castellucci certainly is aiming to bring a unique response and new ideas to this tetralogy of operas.

What those ideas might be however is still hard to define at this stage, but in terms of mood and character and tone it already has made a considerable impact, particularly with the musical direction under the baton of Alain Altinoglu. That tone is set straight away in Die Walküre - as it ought to be - by the opening storm that shows a Siegmund being battered against a screen bearing a faint imprint of a ring/circle by a gushing torrent of water. His predicament is clear. Less clear maybe is the colourful apparel that Hunding's wife presents him with when welcoming him unwittingly into the trap of her home, but a pacing wolf-like black dog and a shifting array of oppressive rooms, cabinets, wardrobes and furniture enclosing the two of them in tight spaces fits perfectly with the threat that this stay presents to the Walsung.

Why Hunding reposes in what looks like a confessional however is anyone's guess, the set transforming from darkness to light, the set turning minimalist with only the confessional, a bed and a fridge shifting around the open space. The sword Nothung is not buried in an ash tree but borne by or perhaps actually buried in Sieglinde. Removed, it is stored in fridge while Siegmund and Sieglinde welcome the sudden arrival of spring by burying each other in flowers and rolling around in blood, enact a baptism or kind of rebirth as brother and sister in blood. The least you can say is that stagecraft is remarkable and holds attention even if it is hard to rationalise, the shifting props and minor adjustments of lighting, smoothly and imperceptibly changing from one scene and mood into another.

If you think Act I was peculiar, Act II despite being again rather minimalist in overall approach has many more eccentric touches, too many to go through every one of them all and you'd be none the wiser even if they were described. What matters is whether it gets across the gravity and import of this lynchpin scene of this opera and debatably the whole tetralogy. What it seems to focus on is the opposition of ideals and philosophies of the opposing forces within Valhalla, or at the very least find visual ways of establishing their character. Fricke enters Valhalla in an extravagant white wedding gown with a troupe of similarly attired followers, fairly shaking with rage at the mockery Siegmund and Sieglinde have made of the sacred sacrament of marriage. She crushes some white doves while Wotan washes the head of a statue of Buddha with milk. Whether you take any deeper meaning from this or not, there is no reason why these gods should behave as ordinary mortals.

For his part, Wotan recounts his folly and his failure to Brünnhilde wearing a red blindfold with dark semi-invisible figures of his entourage waving flags that spell IDIOT behind him. Brünnhilde's steed Grane is seen as nothing more than disembodied skeletal floating lower legs, again operated by invisible extras. Brünnhilde is crushed momentarily beneath its hoof at the weight of Wotan's will and command to the Valkyrie. Act II of course is all about revisiting the past and determining the future, and it can be a little dry, so these visual theatrics can help establish the nature of what transpires, but it's hard to see that these add anything, or really understand their intent. It seems to get even sillier still when Brunhilde gives Siegmund an orange while advising him of his fate on shifting sands, all of Act II delivered in the gravest intonations, before shapeless creatures smother him. Regardess of what you make of it, musically, vocally and in terms of the tone you expect, it delivers the depth of intensity of the Act.

Likewise, Act III fires into the Ride of the Valkyrie with the same full dark intent. These are Valkyrie to truly strike terror into the soul as, dressed in black robes with helmets and shields, they drag the hairless naked bodies of fallen heroes to their final resting place in Valhalla in the enveloping bleak darkness of the stage. The final scene between Wotan and Brünnhilde is completely stripped back to black as a large white screen is lowered and tilted over them, with only a few ominous shadows rippling across on the other side of the veil behind them. There is a brief burst of flame in a circle, the shape of the ring that has become the connecting or defining element between the beginning and end of each of the two operas so far. Nothing else is needed really when Alain Altinoglu conducts the orchestra to bring out every nuance of emotion and sensitivity from the scene.

The La Monnaie Die Walküre is given a very different treatment to the one in Das Rheingold. It's a dark shadow world for the larger part of this opera, the world unformed and unstable, from the shifting furniture of Hunding's abode in Act I, the pacing wolf, the swarming figures that swallow Siegmund, the dark mounts of the Valkyrie that pass by in the background. Individually, these things might not add up to anything meaningful, but collectively they establish a specific mood, finding the necessary balance of darkness and light (admittedly more darkness than light in this work). Like Frank Castorf's extraordinary Bayreuth Ring, Castellucci is clearly not going to be restricted to a single style across this cycle, adapting to the distinct character of each of the works and the opportunities they offer. So far however it lacks the thematic rigour of Castorf's Ring and an overall concept hasn't yet emerged other than this idea of a circle or ring being a key image, which is appropriate but hardly revolutionary.

Some might expect more from Romeo Castellucci on this epic tetralogy, but so far Das Rheingold and Die Walküre have been successful in their own context and who knows whether certain visual leitmotifs might not recur in the next two works (probably not). Certainly the musical direction of Alain Altinoglu provides the necessary heft that you would expect and perhaps the intent is to let the language of the music speak more strongly here, with the visual element supporting that in a more abstract fashion. There are some interesting choices made as far as the casting goes, and I'm all for bringing new voices into the world of Wagner, but not all of them are convincing this time around.

I wasn't too keen on the trills introduced by Nadja Stefanoff's Sieglinde in Act I, but she is excellent in the subsequent acts, looking truly anguished rather than dramatically acting it as seems to be the case with Peter Wedd's Siegmund, a joyless Wehwald. Too many of the performances are operatically earnest, the movements too choreographed to show any real feelings. It seems to afflict Gábor Bretz this time around, his delivery inexpressively intoned with little emotional engagement. There is little sign of resignation you expect from Wotan in Act II or fury in Act III. Marie-Nicole Lemieux is another fine singer who was introduced to to the Wagnerian repertoire in Das Rheingold and her Fricka here is capable, her performance good but perhaps not outstanding or as commanding as you might like. For me, Ingela Brimberg's was the most impressive here, connecting deeply with the different sides of Brünnhilde, but all of the Valkyrie were formidable on a scale commensurate with the mythology of the Ring. Whether we can say that about Castellucci's direction of this Ring cycle remains yet to be seen. 

External links: La Monnaie-De Munt, Auvio streaming

Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Brussels, 2019)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Svetlana Aksenova, Bogdan Volkov, Olga Kulchynska, Ante Jerkunica, Stine Marie Fischer, Bernarda Bobro, Carole Wilson, Vasily Gorshkov, Alexander Vassiliev, Nicky Spence, Alexander Kravets

La Monnaie steaming - June 2019

The Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov has lately been viewing opera in the context of therapy, in productions like Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and Les Troyens, the intention always clearly to delve more deeply into the works and explore their underlying themes. The results have been to varying levels of success and suitability for their subjects, but with Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, the director is on much more familiar ground, in Russian opera where some of his best work has been achieved.

The idea of exploring the underlying psychology of works actually has a two-fold purpose, perhaps even three in the case of The Tale of Tsar Saltan. One is to bring less familiar Russian classics to the attention of a modern western audience who may be less enamoured of fairy-tales and make them accessible. The second is indeed to delve into the subtext of the fairy tale, and - when considered as being a technique used widely by this director - the third is to show perhaps that opera is indeed a kind of therapy in its own right, reaching out and communicating on a non-verbal level through music and dramatic subtext.

In the La Monnaie production of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a modern-day real-world framing device around the fairy tale that doesn't so much put the magical fantasy at a distance as bring us closer to it. (This is something that Romeo Castellucci has also been doing to powerful effect in the mythology of Orphée et Eurydice and the monumentally fantastical The Magic Flute). Here the fairy story is told to a young boy with autism. He has never seen his father and doesn't understand why his parents are estranged, so his mother tells him The Tale of Tsar Saltan, finding that the only way of reaching him is through the toy soldiers and magical tales that so enchant him, hoping to communicate the truth through the fable, casting herself as the tsarina.

The characteristics of Pushkin's fairy tale are familiar, his mother suffering a kind of Cinderella upbringing, abused by her mother and two wicked sisters. When they are presented to the tsar who is looking for a bride her sisters can only promise extravagant weddings while the youngest girl - a humble seamstress - promises she can deliver a worthy heir for the tsar. And becoming tsarina she does, but on the birth of the child her disgruntled sisters intercept the messenger and the tsar is informed that that the tsarina has given birth to a monster. To the astonishment of the villagers on this occasion for happiness and celebration, a message returns from the tsar saying that his wife and child should be thrown into the sea in a barrel.

Mythology and fairy tales traditionally have an important role to play in putting an important message across to a wide audience in a way that can endure for centuries, and opera can be seen to fulfil the same function. More than just musical drama for entertainment, and certainly more than being a singing contest to debate over who sings roles best, opera at its best and most meaningful - like Die Zauberflöte cited above - communicates something essential about our understanding of the world and of humanity's place within it, along with all the joys and troubles that come with it.

Tcherniakov's production of Tsar Saltan is a way of finding a route back to the underlying meaning of the work and to some extent necessarily reinterpreting it for a new age. The fairy tale and the opera are essentially about the loss of innocence of a child struggling to come to terms with the reality of the world. The realisation that it can be cruel, unfair and unjust needs to be reconciled with an awareness that life itself is a miracle, and that it can still be possible to find good within it. Using an autistic child allows the audience a way of seeing the 'magic' in the fairy tale of existence again.

In fact watching the opera in this way the concept is so good and the performances so impressive that it feels completely natural and authentic, as if this is the only way to see the opera and you couldn't imagine it being done any differently. And it's hard to imagine a more traditional representation being as profoundly moving as the progression and resolution that Tcherniakov devises for it, which - very much in line with truth and reality - doesn't mean that there is necessarily a happy ending to the fairy tale, much as one might wish for it.

There's much more that needs to be done to make this more than just a clever idea and Tcherniakov's production design is perfectly up to the task. It starts with a plain wood panelling background, mother and child playing together enveloped in a dull reality. As the story is related, the narrative magic exerts its influence and begins to take over, first populated by characters in cross-hatched puffy costumes (similar to David Hockney's designs for the famous Glyndebourne production of A Rake's Progress), with sketchy animation gradually drawing the boy/Gvidon into the swan's womb-like world of security. The blending and balance of ugly reality with animated magical fantasy is masterful.

There are of course other benefits to be gained from Dmitri Tcherniakov introducing a work well-known only in Russia in such an effective manner to western Europe, and primarily that's permitting us to enjoy Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's beautiful orchestration and melodic flair - the Flight of the Bumblebee originating from this work - perfectly attuned to the dramatic and emotional core of the story, overflowing with glorious choruses. These are all very much essential Russian opera characteristics of course and brought out marvellously by Alain Altinoglu conducting the orchestra of La Monnaie.

Just as wondrous are the singing performances since Rimsky-Korsakov's vocal writing can be underestimated in favour of his considerable fame as an orchestrator. Svetlana Aksenova as the mother/tsarina and Bogdan Volkov as the boy/Gvidon are just incredible with the kind of Russian voices needed here; strong in delivery, but filled with warmth and passion and a little bit of an edge of bordering on despair. This is another outstanding, imaginative production from Tcherniakov, Altinoglu and La Monnaie, every element working perfectly in service of the opera, recognising the extraordinary ability of the medium to communicate on so many levels, and using them all brilliantly.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Bartók - Duke Bluebeard's Castle / The Magnificent Mandarin (Brussels, 2018)

Béla Bartók - Duke Bluebeard's Castle / The Magnificent Mandarin

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2018

Alain Altinoglu, Christophe Coppens, Ante Jerkunica, Nora Gubisch, Gábor Vass, Vincent Clavaguera-Pratx, Merche Romero, Brigitta Skarpalezos, Dan Mussett, Norbert De Loecker, Amerigo Delli Bove, James Vu Anh Pham

La Monnaie Streaming - June 2018

When you read about the atrocities committed by the real-life inspiration for Bluebeard, it seems a little tasteless to make his story the subject of a fairy tale or an opera. Rather than focus on the horrors of what really took place in the castle of Gilles de Rais, the dark fairy tale story has become more of a cautionary tale on how a woman attempts to break down defensive barriers of masculine power and control in order to engage love and self-awareness but falls victim in the end to her own feminine weaknesses of curiosity and jealousy. That's one interpretation anyway, but there is a certain amount of ambiguity played with there as well as a sense of horror at what can lie in the darker recesses of the human psyche. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle does actually explore that quite successfully.

It's a beautifully structured and concise piece, gifted with a score from Bartók that is precisely attuned to its moods and darkness, yet, it's not so precise that it can't also convey the ambiguity that allows it to work on a number of levels. That character is very much emphasised by the diabolically-intoned spoken-word introduction which leaves it open whether what take place on the inside or the outside. Are we looking at Duke Bluebeard's Castle as a place of horror or do the seven locked rooms of the castle rather a symbolical representation of the inner life of Duke Bluebeard?

The latter, the symbolical and the allegorical, is very much to the fore in La Monnaie's production directed by Christophe Coppens, the former artist and fashion designer who has returned to his theatrical roots and who was first involved with opera in La Monnaie's version of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, (which they retitled 'Foxie!'). The castle is a grid of nine rooms, with Bluebeard at its centre unable to move, unreachable, wrapped in the castle constrictor-like grip. Judit's appearance and fearless willingness to explore breaks down this barrier on the opening of the first chamber, but Bluebeard still remains confined to a wheelchair until he is finally freed. Freeing Bluebeard however might not be such a great idea.

The set design highlights that this freedom is one of breaking down barriers to self-awareness or self-reflection by making this a castle of mirrors. Every surface is mirrored, but angled and distorting. It's dark, cold blue, turning to red as Judit recognises that everything in each of the rooms is covered in blood. The chambers themselves are of course symbolic of what lies in the deeper recesses of the male psyche, bathed in violence, avarice and secrecy, closing down human feelings, hiding a lake of tears and sentiments of love in the seventh chamber. It's the idea that Bluebeard might harbour those feelings for other women that proves to be an open door that the woman can never close once she has become aware of it. Some things are better not knowing.

As a staging and representation Coppens' direction and designs are effective enough, if not really spectacular, daring or revealing of any new ideas or insights. It remains a fairly static production, with only Judit moving slowly between one room and the next. The lighting brings emphasis to the music, saving its big moment to chime with Bartók's grand theme for the opening of the fifth chamber. It's in the musical performance really that the work lives, and Alain Altinoglu finds that epic quality in the work, the dark fairy-tale and the dark allegory. It's a work for great singers too, and Ante Jerkunica and Nora Gubisch bring out its chilling stridency.

What is good about the production however is that it doesn't just view the partnering piece as an entirely separate work, but uses Bartók's The Magnificent Mandarin - composed in 1924 - to also to highlight and add further commentary on Bartók's short 1918 opera - his only one - Duke Bluebeard's Castle. It's a welcome change for seeing Duke Bluebeard's Castle paired with another short one-act opera like Iolanta or La Voix Humaine, and even as a ballet-pantomime, The Magnificent Mandarin is a much more complementary piece than you would first imagine, and perhaps even allows both works to gain something in the pairing.

If Duke Bluebeard's Castle is all symbolism of suppressed and internalised emotions, repressed sexual desire and violence, those characteristics are made explicit to some extent in The Magnificent Mandarin, where an unscrupulous brothel manager assaults and robs clients and pays for his crimes when he murders a Chinese Mandarin. Coppens accordingly revisits the dark chambers of the castle as the colourful and brightly lit rooms of a brothel, where we can voyeuristically see those behaviours carried out in the Technicolor style of Hitchcock's Rear Window. This might perhaps account for Bluebeard appearing again at the conclusion in his wheelchair, as otherwise there's no direct overlapping or reference between the two parts of this production.

I say explicit, but it's actually highly stylised, very much in the cartoon come to life quality that Coppens used in Foxie! The Cunning Little Vixen. That doesn't mean however that it can't get across the intent of the piece, the sensuality and the violence that rises to the surface, and it's often quite clever and imaginative in the designs, such as one of the prostitutes wearing a skirt of legs that dissolve into a blur of body parts in her tryst with the Mandarin. Again it's Bartók's music that is highly expressive and it's matched much more precisely to the dancer's movements and actions, delivered with like precision and expression by Alain Altinoglu's conducting of the La Monnaie orchestra.

Links: La Monnaie

Verdi - Don Carlo (Strasbourg, 2016)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

L’Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg - 2016

Daniele Callegari, Robert Carsen, Stephen Milling, Andrea Carè, Tassis Christoyannis, Ante Jerkunica, Elza van den Heever, Elena Zhidkova, Patrick Bolleire, Rocío Perez, Camille Tresmontant

Culturebox - November 2016

There are some dark operas in the Verdi catalogue - Macbeth and I due Forscari are certainly there and Simon Boccanegra is no bundle of laughs - but none of them are as bleak and pitiless as Don Carlo. What makes it so is that each of the characters is offered the opportunity of love and friendship, but either happiness is snatched from them or they consciously spurn it and make other choices that they feel are for a greater good. None of those choices work out well, but the fact that it could have been so different is what gives the opera a darker edge that Verdi fills with music of overwhelming melancholy and regret.

OK, we get that Don Carlo is dark, so perhaps we don't need Robert Carsen to emphasise it so heavily in his production of the 4-Act Italian version at L’Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg. Carsen's idea is to establish the uneasy alliance between the oppressive political regime of Philip II and the merciless persecution of heretics by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church as a kind of death cult alliance. Everyone is dressed in black, wearing dark suits or soutanes, and the set is a black box. Rather more than just visually darkening the work down however, Carsen has a few other ideas and changes that take this a little further.

It's risky to tamper with individual motivations, inner conflicts and the complex inter-relationships in Don Carlo. They already sit on a delicate balance, so you really don't want to be adding additional levels onto them. Verdi's Don Carlo is based on a work by Friedrich Schiller, but Robert Carsen in his Strasbourg production finds a parallel in the work with another of Verdi's favourite writers: Shakespeare, and specifically in Hamlet. In the version without the Fontainebleau scene, Don Carlo opens with the funeral of a king - Carlo's grandfather Charles V - and we see a brooding young man dressed in black with only a skull for company on the stage, reflecting on mortality, as a ghostly voice seemingly from the dead king, calls out a warning to him.

Using Hamlet as a reference, Carsen in this way establishes the tone and the nature of the work as directly and quickly as possible. Without having recourse to the Fontainebleau scene, Carsen's evocation of Hamlet establishes that the primary reason for Carlo's despair is not the death of Charles V, but a more personal conflict and quasi-incestuous sentiments about his father marrying his new 'mother' Elisabeth, the same woman who had previously been promised to him as a bride in the excised Fontainebleau scene. It's an act of a ruler exercising power in the interest of consolidating that power rather than for the sake of the people, and Carlo's response is the only sane one in such a situation; madness. It leads to Philip having to banish Hamlet-Carlo to a foreign land after he takes up arms against him, and even consider whether he might not be justified in killing his own son.

So, all in all, whether you think all the blackness on the stage is necessary, you have to respect that it is justified by the tone of the work itself. And if Hamlet is used as a reference, it is not a framework that can be imposed on top of Don Carlo. The very idea is absurd and surely unsustainable. Rather, Carsen uses Shakespeare's imagery to draw attention to similar themes in Verdi's Don Carlo, taking it away from the historical and even the personal - the Italian version without the Fontainebleau scene facilitates this - and putting the focus instead on the social and political, on questions of state oppression, on religious fanaticism, and the not insignificant application that this has for today.

Verdi, it's true, wasn't a big fan of religious authoritarianism, so the emphasis in the Opéra National du Rhin production of the state being a theocracy that facilitates the will and the violent means of the church is a relevant one, and it's one that Verdi's dark drama is able to sustain. "Death in my hands can reap a harvest", the Grand Inquisitor tells soutane-robed Philip, and together they represent a formidable force of oppression. The crime of the Flemish delegates when they are brought to the court is not insurrection but heresy for not holding to the faith of their Holy Ruler. The auto-da-fe scene, often so difficult to stage convincingly, is effectively handled by Carson. It's the books of the heretics that are burnt in a conflagration, while the black-robed priests execute the hooded kneeling heretics with pistols.

Carsen consequently brings a strong and meaningful focus to the work. It's not only about state oppression but it's also about crushing personal sentiments for the sake of belief in something greater. It's not just Carlo and Philip who have to struggle with the dilemma of killing someone in their own close family. Elisabeth and Carlo's happiness counts for nothing in the greater scheme of things: even Elisabeth believes that her marriage to Philip as the king is more important. Eboli too belatedly recognises the mistakes she makes. There is perhaps only one beacon of light in Don Carlo where integrity remains unsullied by adversity and ambition, and that's Carlo's friendship with Rodrigo. You think so? Think again.

It's one thing to use Shakespeare's Hamlet as a working template to bring out other elements from Don Carlo, but Robert Carsen's biggest intervention is in his manipulation of the ending and its subversion of the friendship between Carlo and Posa. Posa controversially doesn't die here at the end of Act III while visiting Carlo in prison, but his assassination is faked as part of a plot of the church to overthrow Philip and assume total power with Posa as its figurehead. We're not dealing with history here in Carsen's production, and there's precious little historical accuracy in Schiller or Verdi's version anyway, so that matters little. What matters more is finding a way to making the huge flaw of the ending of Verdi's opera work in a more convincing manner, without undermining the essence of the work and the themes it considers.

At the very least Carsen delivers a shock that is greater than the disembodied voice of Charles V bringing about a deus ex machina. Here Carlo looks on aghast as the uprising falters not at the voice of a ghostly monk, but the voice of the Grand Inquisitor - the people bowing before the far more earthly might of the military arm of the church. But what of the inviolable friendship between Carlo and Posa? Well, it wouldn't be the first time that the sincerity of that friendship has been questioned, and indeed the rousing theme of the two men can sound rather hollow and false in the midst of all the through-composed darkness, so all Carsen is doing is taking this further and pushing the tone of the work towards its natural (as opposed to supernatural) conclusion. At the very least, it can't be faulted for shock impact.

Nor can it be really faulted for musical performance. Daniele Callegari strikes a suitable sombre tone that matches the tinta of the score and the minimal bleakness/blackness of the production, but it never pushes it into heavy overstatement. There's a great deal of light and shade in Verdi's score that belies the melodrama of the situations, and Callegari finds that balance well with the orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg. As is often the case with such a challenging work, the principal roles pose a few problems to Stephen Milling's Filippo II, for Andrea Carè's Don Carlo and for Elza van den Heever's Elisabetta di Valois, but they still without question get across the essence of the predicament in those confrontational moments that Verdi brilliantly creates. Tassis Christoyannis is an impressive duplicitous Posa, and Ante Jerkunica an imposing Grand Inquisitor. I was most impressed by Elena Zhidkova's Princess Eboli, who delivers a stunning "O don fatale" and manages to gather more sympathy for her predicament and actions than is more often the case.

Links: L’Opéra National du Rhin, Culturebox

Wagner - Das Liebesverbot (Madrid, 2016)

Richard Wagner - Das Liebesverbot (Madrid)

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2016

Ivor Bolton, Kasper Holten, Christopher Maltman, Peter Lodahl, Ilker Arcayürek, David Alegret, David Jerusalem, Manuela Uhl, María Miró, Ante Jerkunica, Isaac Galan, María Hinojosa, Francisco Vas

Opus Arte - Blu-Ray

Bold, brash, colourful and comic are not adjectives that you'll find applied to a Wagner opera very often, but Das Liebesverbot is most definitely not a typical Wagner opera. Written before the composer had found his own musical voice for the expression of his philosophy of the importance of art and mythology as a foundation for German culture, Wagner's earlier non-canonical work would have been more in the thrall of the Italian bel canto and French grand opéra. Meyerbeer's 5-Act epics would be the model for Wagner's subsequent opera Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen, but it's the much lighter touch of Bellini and Donizetti that can be detected in Das Liebesverbot.

Das Liebesverbot is notable also for being based on Shakespeare's comedy 'Measure for Measure'. It's not one of the playwright's more famous dramatic works and it seems to be one less likely to be suited for an operatic treatment. It deals with the Duke of Vienna, who has introduced harsh measures to deal with the growing problem of drunkenness, vice, licentious behaviour and the increasing number of establishments of ill-repute in the city. Going in disguise as a friar, the Duke leaves his deputy Lord Angelo to carry out his orders, wishing to see for himself how the law is implemented. He not only sees the unintended consequences of his laws, but he also sees how they can be misused by corrupt individuals for their own ends.

Like most adaptations of Shakespeare to opera, Das Liebesverbot isn't terribly faithful to the original. Wagner relocates the setting from Vienna to the hedonistic Palermo in Sicily, where the corrupt regime in charge of implementing the strict laws are the Governor Friedrich and his Chief of Police, Brighella. The opera version at least retains the characters central to the drama, if not its main players, as it's the relationship between Claudio and Juliet that is to bring the unintended consequences of the laws. As they are not yet married, Claudio has been arrested and condemned to death, the law effectively a ban on love - Das Liebesverbot. His friend Lucio brings the news to Claudio's sister Isabella, who is a nun in a convent. She goes to plead with the governor for the release of her brother, but Friedrich intends to take advantage of the vulnerable young woman's position and tries to seduce her.

If the drama isn't exactly the type of material you would normally associate with Wagner, there is perhaps some indication of his interest in the subject in how it relates to his anti-authoritarian and libertarian views. Even in this early work, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music as he would for all his operas, but otherwise there is very little that is recognisably Wagnerian about the subject or the musical treatment. If you can get past the idea that it has something of an academic workshop quality to it, or that it even comes across as a pastiche, Das Liebesverbot is a hugely enjoyable work, masterfully constructed to create a fine musical drama out of a difficult Shakespearean drama. Wagner works with the contrasting and inconstant tones of the drama, filling it with great melodies and racing rhythms, if not any particularly memorable arias.

Rather than try to integrate the work somehow into the Wagner universe, which seems an impossible task, Ivor Bolton and Kasper Holten instead do their best to capture the pace and dynamic of all its colourful scenes and the musical variety purely on its own terms. Visually, Holten's bold, stylised, cartoon-like approach suits the opéra-comique nature of the plot, with rolling platforms keeping things moving across the stage. The director struggles nonetheless to find ways to hold interest through some of Wagner's excesses. The duet of the meeting between Isabella and Claudio at the start of Act II, for example, is unnecessarily long drawn-out without any compensating musical qualities. Even with good direction, using mobile phones and text messages to try and catch the absurdities of the scene, it still drags.

It doesn't help that this scene is followed with another scene - a trio between Isabella, Lucio and Dorella - that likewise feels rather academic in its composition and utterly lifeless in the staging. This scene highlights another problem with the opera - although it's evident from quite early on - and that's finding the right kind of voices to sing it. Regardless of the model it is based on, Das Liebesverbot is not bel canto, and the lighter, lyrical and agile voices that are cast here might sound lovely, but they are frequently overwhelmed by the orchestration and challenged by the length of the scenes. The cast would be more at home in the post-Wagnerian works of Strauss or Schreker, but that doesn't quite work here, suggesting that Das Liebesverbot demands the range of Strauss along with traditional Wagnerian stamina. Within those limitations however Manuela Uhl is certainly pushed but copes well as Isabella, but it's only Christopher Maltman's Friedrich who holds up consistently, albeit to lesser challenges.

The colourful production however comes into its own at the absurd comedy of the finale. A little more convincingly than Shakespeare (but not much), Wagner conceives a fancy dress party as a means of tricking Friedrich into sleeping with his own wife instead of Isabella. There are still problems with this idea of the governor who banned pleasure being invited to a carnival (with the Chief of Police Brighella also being lured into making a fool of himself for good measure), not to mention the strange circumstance of his wife being a nun (María Miró an excellent Mariana), but it's a good excuse to set the revelations and resolutions to vibrant carnival music that bring the whole affair to a lively conclusion. In that respect, Kasper Holten does justice to Das Liebesverbot in a production that should satisfy Wagner completists but, much like finally getting the chance to experience Strauss's Feuersnot or Guntram, you'll probably not be in any great hurry to see it again.

The Teatro Real production of Das Liebesverbot is nicely presented on the Blu-ray release. The image is clear and colourful and the sound mixes present the musical performance well in uncompressed high definition mixes. As often seems to be the case, the mixing tends to favour the orchestral performance, particularly in the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 surround track, with the already weak voices further submerged in the centre channel. They come across a little better in the LPCM Stereo, but are still a little low. The only extra feature on the disc is a Cast Gallery, but the circumstances of the composition of the opera and discussion of its content (where more of its inconsistencies and problems are identified) can be found in an essay by Chris Walton in the booklet. A synopsis is also provided. The BD is region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Teatro Real Madrid