Puccini - Tosca (Baden-Baden, 2017)

Giacomo Puccini - Tosca

OsterFestspiele, Baden-Baden - 2017

Simon Rattle, Philipp Himmelmann, Kristine Opolais, Marcelo Álvarez, Marco Vratogna, Peter Rose, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Peter Tantsits, Douglas Williams, Walter Fink

ARTE Concert - 17th April 2017

It's too easy to write Tosca off as either a tawdry thriller or as a pure romantic melodrama. Those aspects are central to Puccini's verismo adaptation of Sardou's drama, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the characters have to be one-dimensional. There can be a little more nuance to how each of the three principal protagonists meet their fate in three of the most dramatic deaths in all opera, and a lot more to Puccini's dramatic music than heavy-handed underscoring. The Baden-Baden 2017 Easter Festival production of Tosca attempts to draw this out in Philipp Himmelmann's updating, while Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic make a strong case for the musical qualities of the work.

The conventional view of Tosca is a fairly black and white one of good guys and bad guys. On one side we have Scarpia as evil personified, twisted by the power that gives him freedom to indulge his lusts and baser instincts. On the other side we have the painter Cavaradossi as a brave rebel who stands up to arrest and torture by refusing to betray Angelotti, a colleague who has escaped from prison and hidden in the chapel where the painter is finishing a portrait of the Madonna (a very saintly enterprise). It's Tosca who takes Scarpia on directly, turning his lusts against him to buy time and escape.

All the main characters are however eventually doomed in their enterprises and it's not just cruel twists of fate; they can be seen in no small part to be the agents of their own destruction. For Tosca, it is jealousy that leads Scarpia's men to Cavaradossi's house. For Cavaradossi, it's a foolhardy embarking on revolutionary activism from what seems to be a matter of honour than for any real political conviction. Scarpia; well, his flaws are clear enough but his actions are twisted into some kind of delusional invulnerability conferred upon him by his religious devotion. In some ways, all of then can be seen to regard their fame and celebrity rendering them immune from any real harm.

As an opera, Tosca certainly merits more however than just playing to the stereotypes of sneering villainy and noble self-sacrifice. Those elements are an enjoyable element that are a necessary part of the character of the work, but there are other considerations that can provide a rather more thoughtful drama. The Baden-Baden production chooses to dispense with the Napoleonic flavour of the work for a more modern perspective, but it doesn't want to boil the baby in the reheated bathwater, to somewhat mangle a metaphor and likewise risk missing its intent.

Act I of the Baden-Baden Tosca takes place in a bright and airy cathedral, not at all like the dark ornate enclosures we are accustomed to seeing. There's space here for Cavaradossi to set up his computer and project the image he is working on onto a larger canvas. Tosca is dressed in a much more stylish bright red trouser suit and Scarpia, wearing a suit with his blond hair tied back in a ponytail, arrives with the finger-snapping efficiency of a business executive or politician with his underlings. Act II also presents a refreshingly modern outlook that gets rid of all the heavy drapes and candlesticks of a Napoleonic chamber.

There's no point in modernising Tosca however unless you can find a way to capture the same sense of menace and oppression that is in the original setting and Philipp Himmelmann finds a modern equivalence in the surveillance society of an authoritarian power. Scarpia's office is a wall of screens that are used to monitor and control the behaviour of its citizens. There is even a camera used to record his interrogations and, in an extra-creepy way, his seductions of women like Tosca that he can use to exert further influence and control over them. It's an effective enough modern context for how power is used and abused that doesn't in any way lessen the impact of the original.

Whether the singing meets similar expectations that an audience demand is another question, but again comparisons have little relevance. Everyone has their own favourite performances of past Toscas, and the cast here are unlikely to challenge any historic greats, but then opera is not a singing competition. That said, the performances are all good, and certainly effective in bringing a degree of characterisation and personality to the roles, as well as making sure that it serves to bring about the necessary impact.

Marcelo Álvarez gives the most assured performance as Cavaradossi. There's never been much doubt about his ability to sing this role before, even if he is inclined towards standing and delivering old-fashioned operatic arm-spreading gestures out to the audience. Here he is better directed and proves to be a much more competent actor: and it makes all the difference. It's a performance of intense feeling that has all the drama heroics you might like, while also singing the role exceptionally well.

Kristine Opolais may not have the commanding presence of some of the more notable Toscas in the history of opera, but by the same token she doesn't rely on the mannerisms of old. If she initially shows a few areas of weakness, they are scarcely worth drawing attention to and she gives a fine performance that grows in confidence as the drama progresses and her own character grows in response to the situations. There is no question that she hits every one of those key moments effectively and nails her 'Vissi d'arte'. Opolais also establishes an intense struggle of wills against Marco Vratogna's Scarpia in the second Act, where again the direction helps bring out Scarpia's calculating menace.

As is often the case now, Act III plays out with Cavaradossi being under no illusions about his fate, taking a more realistic view in spite of Tosca's protestations that she has their rescue all figured out. The use of lethal injections to the head instead of a firing squad deprives the audience of the traditional dramatic conclusion and from Tosca's famous leap from Castel Sant' Angelo, which is always a risky thing to do. Tosca's final cries however never fail to hit their mark, and with Simon Rattle harnessing the full power of the Berlin Philharmonic, the vital impact isn't lessened in the slightest. It all goes to show that you may get tired very easily of all the familiar imagery and costume drama, but Puccini's Tosca is bigger than that and the efficacy of its drama endures.

Links: Baden-Baden, ARTE Concert

Verdi - La Traviata (Baden-Baden, 2015 - Webcast)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata 

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 2015

Pablo Heras-Casado, Rolando Villazón, Olga Peretyatko, Atalla Ayan, Christina Daletska, Emiliano Gonzalez, Tom Fox, Konstantin Wolff, Simone Piazzola, Deniz Uzun, Walter Fink

ARTE Concert - June 2015

La Traviata has nothing to prove. It remains Verdi's most popular masterpiece. Aside from the quality of the work itself, which is reason enough never to tire of it, there is always the opportunity to see its universal themes approached differently and to see how some of the best sopranos in the world take to it. At the Baden-Baden 2015 festival, we have the opportunity, for the first time as far as I know, to see Olga Peretyatko pit herself against one of the greatest works in the repertoire. Directing this production is none other than the troubled tenor Rolando Villazón.

As impressive a singer as she is, the casting of Olga Peretyatko is by no means an assured success. One of the finest bel canto singers of our time, Peretyatko has been impressive in her Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, as Blonde in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and has shown some fine dramatic soprano capabilities as well in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride. Singing Violetta however is another matter. It's a challenging role to sing, with a dramatic and dynamic range that would put any soprano through their paces. Most importantly, it demands that a soprano bring something of her own personality to imprint upon the character.

Even in the modern age, La Traviata remains a soprano's opera more than it does a director's one, although a radical interpretation can get to the burning anger that lies in Verdi's fierce condemnation of social hypocrisy. That's evidently not what Rolando Villazón's circus-like production for Baden-Baden sets out to achieve.  It's hard though to work out what angle the director is coming from though other than just making it a colourful, abstract and entertaining spectacle.

The circus stage is actually more of a music-box scene, with a few large colourful discs like gambling chips that provide good platforms for the scenes of all four acts. The idea seems to be that the music box is contemplated by the dying Violetta before the opera starts, prompting her to reflect on the significant scenes of her life in flashback. I guess a music box is as good a description for this opera as any, but I can't see how it benefits the drama in any way. As good as Olga Peretyatko is, there's just not much life in this production.

Few of Villazón's ideas really amount to anything. Violetta seems to identify with a blonde acrobat, who acts in some of the scenes as her double. Her appearances are fitful and arbitrary and it's not as if a double was needed to do some gymnastics. Rather it tends to make the connection and relationships between the characters rather awkward in some key scenes. In what is usually one of the most powerful scenes of the work for example, Alfredo's denunciation of Violetta at the party in Act III, rather than the usual flurry of notes cast in Violetta's face, Villazón finds another way of showing the violence of this action. Alfredo rolls the money up into a knife, but the impact is lessened somewhat when he thrusts it into the ground while Violetta looks on a little way off.

There's only so much Peretyatko can do this this kind of direction, which never really captures the dynamic of Violetta's journey. Vocally, she's impressive, with a distinct quality of her own, a gorgeous rich full tone and a flowing legato that is able to do full justice to the role. Played rather slower than usual, the pace allows her voice and her technique to be heard clearly and it never falters. Whether it's paced as such on her account or on the reading of the conductor, I don't know, but it does unfortunately suck the life out of the work, particularly the energetic Act I. She doesn't look the sickest Violetta you've ever seen in Act IV, although it's still almost impossible for you still not to feel the impact of her final moments, so well has it been managed and scored by Verdi.  

The dynamic was also missing from the conducting of Pablo Heras-Casado. I was looking forward to seeing what the Spanish conductor did with this, having heard him conduct one of the best Die Zauberflotes I've ever heard at Aix-en-Provence last year. I was disappointed here. There should be energy, passion and anger here and it just doesn't come across that way. Very much worthwhile for showing how capably and largely successfully Olga Peretyatko can extend her range into Verdi's dramatic opera, this is however not the best production or musical treatment you'll see of La Traviata.

Links: ARTE Concert

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 2013

Simon Rattle, Robert Carsen,  Pavol Breslik, Ana Durlovski, Dimitry Ivashchenko, Kate Royal, Michael Nagy, Chen Reiss, Annick Massis, Magdalena Kožená, Nathalie Stutzmann, José van Dam, James Elliott

ARTE Live Web Internet Streaming, 1st April 2013

There's not much magic in Robert Carsen's new production of The Magic Flute for the 2013 Easter Festival at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. There's a flute at least, and you can't always take that for granted - but Carsen very purposely brings this production very much down to earth. There are no big entrances and no grand effects, the settings are all related to nature and death. A rather grave Die Zauberflöte, you could say, which doesn't provide much in the way of spectacle. Mozart's music however can sustain that, but that might be more to do with the fine account of the score given by Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Simon Rattle and some strong singing performances than with anything that Robert Carsen brings to the production.

Carsen at least applies a viable and consistent concept to the work, cutting through all the Masonic rituals and ceremonies to the heart of the conflict that lies between the opposing forces of the Queen of the Night and Sarastro. It does a little more than that and actually attempts to update some of the work's less-enlightened views on women to give a more equality-minded view of the differences between the two sexes in regard to the rational and the emotional capacity of all human beings. One is not necessarily superior to the other here. Despite some of the inconsistencies with this position within the work itself - which only enhances its ambiguity and richness - it's the joining of those two forces through the union of Tamino and Pamina to create a better world that undoubtedly forms the heart and the meaning of the work.

Carsen merely emphasises this union by showing it not so much in contrast to the entrenched positions of Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, as much it being the beginning of a new age that has the blessing of these once mortal enemies. In Carsen's staging, both Sarastro and Königen present a united force, putting aside differences for the sake of a better future, coming together even in scenes where they don't usually appear together to offer silent support to the other side, even if their stated position indicates the opposite. You'll find women (and even Königen's Three Ladies) then alongside the men in Sarastro's temple and - just to get the point across - even the Three Boys are transformed into Three Girls wearing dresses to call Pamina back from her despair and attempted suicide.

This all requires a bit of an adjustment from viewer used to the traditional certainties within Die Zauberflöte, of which there are few enough as it is. In place of the old-fashioned obscure Masonic imagery and rituals - and indeed the traditional spectacular set-pieces - Carsen's staging takes the opera back to a more natural setting, with the emphasis on Life and Death. There are no big spectacular effects scenes here, the location consisting for the most part of a cemetery of open graves set against the backdrop of a projection of woods. The opening scene then sees Tamino scramble out of a grave to be rescued from what isn't anything more than a big snake by the Three Ladies in dressed in mourning attire. Papagena makes her first appearance during Papageno's trial of silence not as an old hag, but as a skull-faced corpse climbing out of a coffin. Even the orchestra, surrounded by a platform, seem to be contained within one big pit.

It's a constant and deliberate attempt to cut back on the flash and wonder. There's no grand entrance even for Königen der Nacht, who simply walks onto the stage with a minimum of ceremony. If she still presents a formidable figure, that's conveyed in the singing delivery of that famous opening aria, and that alone is more than enough. In keeping with the sober funereal imagery, Monostatos is a gravedigger here, the Three Boys are just three boys (when they aren't Three Boys dressed as girls) with no magic flying balloons to transport them. The Speaker and Sarastro are also dressed in formal mourning coats, wearing blindfolds. In the one place where you would at least expect to see magic effects, the playing of the magic flute, we merely see shadows of birds flitting around in the trees in the background.

Carsen's staging then does take away a lot of the wonder and the humour that contributes to the richness of Die Zauberflöte without really bringing anything new out of it. What holds the viewer however, and what the staging only emphasises, is the richness of the music itself and the quality of the performances. Die Zauberflöte wouldn't be part of the normal repertoire of the Berlin Philharmonic, but perhaps because of that they seem to relish in the beauty of the work's symphonic qualities. You'd hardly think Die Zauberflöte was just a Singspiel, but of course the work is much more than that and Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker give a warm account of the work that contrasts with Carsen's direction but at the same time enhances it. It may give every visual appearance of being a dark, morbid version of the opera, but there's more warmth and forgiveness here that you usually find in what can sometimes be a cold and rigidly performed work. It's hugs all around at the end here, with even Monostatos being welcomed back into the big love-in finale.

The casting and the singing also make this an absolutely gorgeous Die Zauberflöte to listen to. With his pure lyrical tenor and fresh, sincere delivery, Pavol Breslik is a natural for Tamino. Alongside Kate Royal's Pamina, a more idealistically perfect couple would be hard to find. Both look good, can act well and have simply beautiful singing voices. Royal's 'Ach ich Fühls' in particular is just exquisitely heartbreaking. And there are no disappointments elsewhere in the cast. Ana Durlovski stepped in at short notice to replace an unwell Simone Kermes as Königen der Nacht and did so very impressively. Dimitry Ivashchenko's Sarastro sounded fine, but had a tendency to work to his own timing rather than follow the conductor. The toning down of the comedy and strong principals meant that there was not danger of Michael Nagy's Papageno stealing the show here, but rather it was a fine performance that was still funny but fitted in well with the overall production.

This production of Die Zauberflöte at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus was recorded on the 1st April 2013 and broadcast via internet streaming throught the ARTE Live Web site, where it is currently still available for viewing until July. Subtitles on the broadcast are in German only.

Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, 2012

Philip Arlaud, Christian Thielemann, Eike Wilm Schulte, Sophie Koch, Renée Fleming, Robert Dean Smith, Jane Archibald, Nikolay Borchev, Kenneth Roberson, Steven Humes, Kevin Conners, Christian Baumgärtel, Roman Grübner, David Jerusalem, Michael Ventow, Christina Landshamer, Rachel Frenkel, Lenneke Ruiten, René Kollo

Medici Live Internet Steaming, 12 February 2012

Much as I love the operas of Richard Strauss, I have conflicted feelings about Ariadne auf Naxos. I’m broadly with the composer on this one, agreeing with his initial reaction to Hugo von Hofmannstahl’s proposal to basically structure the work as an opera within and opera (within an opera) as being much too confusing for an audience. And not just confusing, but worse, dramatically uninvolving. Combining an opera seria with an opera buffa sounds brilliantly clever on the page, setting the old against the new and allowing the difference of style and tone of the forms to work off each other (it worked so well in Der Rosenkavalier), with a clever construct in the Prologue (added after the original version failed) that accounts for this idea, but the work offers still little in conventional dramatic terms. How then do we account for the enduring popularity of Ariadne auf Naxos?

Ariadne auf Naxos is also a witty satire of opera patrons, opera composers, opera performers and even opera audiences, but I suspect its in-jokes appeal more to those putting on the work than those in the audience watching it, but even that doesn’t entirely account for the opera being one of Strauss’s most performed works. The musical qualities cannot be denied, even if there is a sense that it’s also one of those works which offers more to the diva who wants to demonstrate her range and sense of fun. If that were the only reason for putting on the work, drawing performers like the exceptional cast gathered for this 2012 production at Baden-Baden, then that’s perhaps justification alone for putting on the work, but there are evidently other aspects that make the work so attractive to international audiences, and that’s the fact that, as clever sounding as the concept is, the originality of Hofmannstahl’s libretto clearly inspired Strauss to write some of his most beautiful arrangements and inventive melodies that do ultimately touch on deeper truths relating to human nature and emotions.

Ariadne auf Naxos doesn’t function terrifically well then as a stage drama and it’s much too self-referential (I’d still happily dispense with the Prologue from the revised/definitive second version of the opera myself), offering little scope for a modern stage director who wants to impose his own personal vision on the concept. It’s also limiting to the performer who may find that the conventions of the opera seria and opera buffa elements are somewhat restrictive, particularly within this framework. What makes the work special however is the fact that it does come from the creative and fertile minds of Strauss and Hofmannstahl in their prime. Following on from such important works as Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier and already working on the magnum opus that would be Die Frau ohne Schatten, Ariadne auf Naxos may suffer from the same pretensions as those other works – even to a greater degree – but that doesn’t mean that it is really any less brilliant either. It may be clever-clever, but there is a complete sincerity in the musical, emotional and dramatic content of their work together as well as the belief that the unique construct and artifice of opera can raise those qualities to greater heights. The challenge for anyone putting on the work then is in actually getting this across.

Trying to be too clever with works that are already clever enough is always a potential pitfall with Strauss and Hofmannstahl. Claus Guth had a go at it, setting the Zurich production of Ariadne auf Naxos in a famous Swiss hotel without managing to bring anything particularly new or revelatory out of the work. The Baden-Baden production is more traditional in its setting. The stage is like… well… a stage – a Broadway musical arrangement, with a sweeping staircase behind on which the assembled well-off guests at the host’s party sit dressed in their finery (1920s style formal dress), watching the entertainment put on for them by “the richest man in Vienna”. If there doesn’t appear then to be a great deal that director Philip Arlaud brings to the table here – the separate buffa and seria elements are clearly divided and played out in a fairly straightforward manner according to their conventions – there is nonetheless a considerable challenge in actually making the opera’s difficult construct work as well as making it interesting and comprehensible to an audience, and that’s actually achieved exceptionally well here.

Simplicity is the key to making Strauss and Hofmannstahl work, even if that’s not as simple as it appears. Christof Loy’s 2011 Salzburg Die Frau ohne Schatten, for example, would appear to be trying to be overly clever with its concept (setting the fairytale in a post-WWII Viennese concert hall), but by stripping the work back of its trappings and allowing the music and the words to speak for themselves, the full power of the work is nonetheless made apparent. It’s the director’s job to give the work and the performers that necessary space to get that across, and that’s done here too. To a large extent then the weight of interpretation, of letting the piece speak for itself, should lie with the conductor and the singers and, as with the Salzburg Die Frau ohne Schatten, we have one of the most attentive and sympathetic of Strauss conductors here in Christian Thielemann.

In the same way that there is a magic created between Strauss and Hofmannstahl, between the composer and the music, between the conflicting elements of Ariadne auf Naxos (and yes, I have to admit, even with its Prologue), there is also the magic (acknowledged in Strauss’s final opera Capriccio) that is created between the performer and the listener. The combination of Strauss, Thielemann and Renée Fleming and their relationship with the audience is one of the great musical wonders of our age, and that magic is abundantly in evidence here. As Ariadne – surprisingly her first time singing this role – Fleming’s line is beautiful, her legato smooth, with that famous richness of tone in a role and with a composer and a conductor who shows off her qualities to their best, while also bringing out the ecstatic beauty of the music in the opera itself.

It’s a recognition of this chemistry, already seen in Baden-Baden’s successful 2009 production of Der Rosenkavalier that in some way accounts for the commission of this new production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Reunited also from that earlier Strauss production is Sophie Koch as the Composer, wearing a Leo Sayer wig, singing the role wonderfully and bringing a nice note of commitment and sincere naivety to the role that belies the parody within it. That’s the case elsewhere in this production, which never plays it as a farce for the fiasco that arises from the central idea of pushing together two different operas in time for a fireworks display. Playing it perfectly seriously – like all good commercial productions, as the Broadway musical setting suggests, the show must always go on – Robert Dean Smith brought his slightly strained heldentenor to the role of Bacchus with similar commitment, and Jane Archibald took on the coloratura fireworks role of Zerbinetta reasonably well, but without ever making much of an impression. All of this contributes to a fine production, even if nothing threatens to overshadow Fleming’s Prima Donna/Ariadne. If I remain unconvinced that Ariadne auf Naxos works conceptually or dramatically, respectively lacking the beautiful concision ofCapriccio and the musical cohesion of Der Rosenkavalier, the beauty of the piece and the inventiveness of Strauss and Hofmannstahl that accounts for its popularity was nonetheless wonderfully evident in the fine staging and singing of this production.

The opera is currently available to view in its entirety and for free on the Medici.tv web site.

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.

Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier

Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier

Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, 2009

Munich Philharmonic, Christian Thielemann, Herbert Wernicke, Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch, Diana Damrau, Franz Hawlata, Franz Grundheber, Jonas Kaufmann, Jane Henschel

Decca

The staging for this Festspiele Baden-Baden production, directed by Herbert Wernicke and conducted by Christian Thielemann, is as sumptuous as Richard Strauss’s score and, surrounded by mirrors that amplify the stage, it’s as languidly self-reflective as Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s original libretto. The choice not to stage it as strictly period in the setting of Marie-Therese’s Vienna around 1740 is somewhat contrary to the composers’ desire to recreate a sense of the light indulgence of the period (and in the process break away from the dark dissonance of Strauss’s previous operas Salome and Elektra), but the libretto and score are, in most sections, strong enough on their own, and so well thematically constructed that Der Rosenkavalier can stand up to a modern, or, in this case, an almost fairy-tale pantomime-like setting.

There is a richness of means by which to enjoy Strauss’s most popular opera, which flits from moment to moment, slipping from happiness into despair, from love into comedy, but principally, it is indeed about being in the moment, living in the moment, but that even within the moment, there are many contradictory thoughts and emotions pulling at one. All this is contained within the playful storyline and within the music that underscores it. Like all Strauss’s work, Der Rosenkavalier takes the language of post-Wagner late-Romanticism opera another stage further into modernity, not just accompanying the voice, not just heightening the emotional tone of the drama or just using leitmotifs to form a musical coherency and symbolism, but presenting the phrasing with an infinite number of meanings and inflections, hinting at deeper underlying psychology and richness of character, living in the moment and crystallising it in melody, but with a deeper consideration for the personality of the characters and particularly in the intricate web that is created through human interaction.

In Act One of the opera, the Feldmarshallin, Princess Marie-Therese, is living in the moment of bliss in her boudoir with her young 17 year-old lover Octavian, heedless of the clamour outside, but dealing in her own time with the levee visitors, including Ochs, the Baron von Lerchenau, who is looking for a relative to deliver a traditional Silver Rose to his young 15 year-old fiancée Sophie. Over the course of the morning, the Marschallin comes to a recognition that she will get old and that Octavian will also move on in time and become like the boorish woman-chasing Baron himself. All these thoughts crowd into the moment at the end of the first Act, leaving her melancholic and reflective, the whole morning flowing to this point and then unstoppably beyond, aided by the lush, evocative scoring by Strauss that draws on a wealth of references and motifs.

In Act Two Sophie is also living in the moment as a young bride-to-be, but when the rose is delivered by Octavian the two young people fall in love with each other, the two of them also caught up in the moment, living for the wonder of the sensation, Octavian begging of Sophie to “remain as you are”. As Octavian plans to rescue Sophie from the clutches of the decrepit Baron, donning his disguise from Act 1’s bedroom farce as the Marschallin’s maid Mariandel for Act 3’s comedy situations, Der Rosenkavalier becomes – for me personally – rather less compelling, at least up until the reappearance of the Marschallin (which here has the additional benefit of some exceptional singing and subtle acting from the ever-wonderful, self-possessed and appropriately regal Renée Fleming), ending with a set of the most exquisite duets and the opera’s incredible trio. In between however, as the characters self-reflexively note, it’s “a farce and nothing more”, “a Viennese masquerade and nothing more”.

Well, it is and it isn’t – nothing is so straightforward in Der Rosenkavalier. Strauss is fully aware of the buffa conventions he is playing with, all of which are complementary to the period in opera terms – not least in the Cherubino-style cross-dressing of a female singer playing a male character who dresses up as a female – and he approaches the scoring of the farce with no less detail and underlying thoughtfulness than anywhere else, knowing that – as Ariadne auf Naxos made explicit – that the strength of the work is in how the diparate elements work off each other. Personally, I feel that it’s often rather too clever for its own good however and, like much of Strauss’s work, it’s rather distanced, controlled and too precise, allowing in little real human feeling or ambiguity, creating a perfect semblance of life like the crystallised silver rose that this production rather ambitiously replaces with a real one at the end.

I’m not entirely convinced by Herbert Wernicke’s production, created for Salzburg and played here at the Festspiele Baden-Baden in 2009 with the Munich Philharmonic under Thielemann, but it does at least create a productive environment for the singers. The 1962 film version starring Elisabeth Schwarzkopf casts a long shadow over the work, but no opera work should ever be considered definitive, and every one of the main performers here – an exceptional cast that includes Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch, Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann – brings something interesting to their characters, with fine performances in both singing and acting terms, as does the ever interesting Thielemann when interpreting Strauss.

The Blu-ray edition from Decca/Unitel Classica looks and sounds marvellous, the performance directed for the screen by the ever reliable Brian Large. Audio tracks are the usual LPCM stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Subtitles are English, French, German, Spanish and Chinese. The Blu-ray also contains a 32 minute look at the opera from the perspective of the conductor and the main singers, who all provide interesting views on the piece, and a booklet with synopsis and a superb essay on the opera by Bryan Gilmore.

Wagner - Lohengrin

Richard Wagner - Lohengrin

Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, 2006

Kent Nagano, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Hans-Peter König, Klaus Florian Vogt, Solveig Kringelborn, Tom Fox, Waltraud Meier, Roman Trekel

Opus Arte

This romantic opera from the end of Wagner’s early period, just before embarking on his more mature work, is rather more conventional and accessible than, for example, the romance of Tristan und Isolde, but by the same token Lohengrin doesn’t have the conceptual weight of later Wagner dramas. The characters are rather one dimensional, divided quite clearly as being on the side of light or darkness, and the score is not as refined as later Wagner. On the other hand, there are some wonderful singing roles, some dynamic scoring that colours the difference between the physical and the spiritual, a terrific drama, and of course the opera is of great interest for the thematic links it has with the composer’s more celebrated works, to say nothing of the fact that the traditional Wedding March originates from this opera.

Lohengrin starts off like a courtroom drama, but it’s one that, being a Wagner opera, is dressed up in regal grandness, heroic declamations and with a strong element of ancient Teutonic mythology underlying it all. On the eve of going to war against Hungary, King Heinrich calls a tribunal meeting to settle a dispute that has arise over the territory of Brabant. Friedrich von Telramund has accused Elsa, the daughter of the late Duke of Brabant, of murdering Gottfried, her brother and the rightful heir to Brabant. Elsa defends her position and calls on a heroic knight of her visions to take up arms and defend herself in combat against Telramund. Her knight in shining armour (quite literally) cannot reveal his name, and begs her not to ask of it, but it transpires – no surprise here since it is the title of the opera – that he is Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, guardian of the Holy Grail, who is himself the subject of Wagner’s final opera. The themes of this opera deal similarly – if not quite as abstractly – with questions of virtue, purity and innocence, but above all here with the noble virtues of complete love and unconditional trust.

Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s 2006 production for the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, conducted by Kent Nagano, brings a new dimension to those themes. His use of the stage, as ever, is simply magnificent, the use of props minimal, the sets nonetheless majestic and impressive, yet simple and not overly ornate. The stage is immaculately lit, balancing light and shade, foreground and background, using colours to highlight and give appropriate emphasis. Whatever angle you look at this from – and the cameras do a fine job in their coverage – the stage and the positions of the characters within achieves maximum impact. At the same time, by making the period non-specific, although certainly more modern than its middle-ages origins, Lehnhoff downplays the fairytale trappings of a heroic knight borne on a chariot drawn by a wild swan (as well as leaning it well away from any troubling National Socialist conceptions that could be applied to the themes), while still remaining true to the opera and its purpose, without over-emphasising or lessening the impact of its musical strengths.

Solveig Kringelborn’s Elsa doesn’t have quite the power of the other singers, nor indeed does Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin, but the nature of their characters is purer than the others, with a bond of trust between them that their counterparts Ostrud and Telramund do not possess, and consequently their voices are softer – more angelically toned than the more typical Wagnerian heldentenor in the case of Lohengrin – but clear, ringing and forceful where required. Tom Fox, as Telramund and Waltraud Meier as Ostrud are however terrific, playing their baddies to the hilt and with delightfully over-the-top almost pantomime eye-rolling madness in the case of Meier’s sorceress – both perfectly appropriate nonetheless for this particular opera and for roles that shouldn’t be underplayed. Kent Nagano conducts the Deutsches Symphonic-Orchester of Berlin for similar dramatic force, but the dynamic and subtle tones are there also, brought out in the fine PCM surround sound mix that comes on the Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray quality cannot be faulted either on its image quality, or the manner in which it is filmed. It captures perfectly the qualities of the stage sets and the lighting and allows you to get right up close with the performers. A 68-minute documentary is also included on the 2-disc set which looks at the opera and its staging in some detail with interviews from most of the principals involved, but it is overlong in its walk-through description of the plot, extensively illustrated with scenes from the opera. Kent Nagano however provides interesting analysis on the tone and complexities of the score, particularly in the preludes to each of the three acts.

Strauss - Elektra

Richard Strauss - Elektra

Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, 2010

Munich Philharmonic, Christian Thielemann, Herbert Wernicke, Linda Watson, Jane Henschel, Manuela Uhl, René Kollo, Albert Dohmen

Opus Arte

The concept behind the presentation of this 2010 Baden-Baden Festspielhaus production of Elektra is immediately apparent and impactful – it’s a stark and brutal representation of Richard Strauss’ dark, brooding and bloody retelling of the Sophocles’ classic mythological drama. As if to reflect the powerful emotions of despair and sentiments of revenge that dominate the tone of the opera, the staging, the lighting, the choreography – more like a concert performance than a dramatically staged opera – all seek to emphasise the loss and isolation of the principal characters.

The Baden-Baden Festspielhaus is a huge stage, and stage director Herbert Wernicke takes full advantage of it, with stark lighting, and minimal use of backgrounds, props or movement, isolating the characters who are all entirely wrapped up in their own grief and torments. The vast stage is however amply filled by the formidable presence of Linda Watson and Jane Henschel as Electra and Clytemnestra, with their small but imposing stature and powerful singing. The charge that they bring to the complex relationship between the mythological mother and daughter – one that of course has become archetypal – is remarkable. Strauss’ chilling, sinister score is equally effective in filling the void that exists between them, not so much underscoring every jibe, cutting remark, underlying threat and menacing gesture, as much as dissecting it in a manner that the listener can physically feel every nuance of an emotional soundscape that is bristling with murderous intent.

Much like Salome that preceded it, with the imagery of doom and bloodletting even more pronounced here, Elektra is consequently a draining experience, even for its relative shortness, which is precisely how it is meant to feel. Conductor Christian Thielemann brings that out with delicacy and without any blood and thunder – or at least not too much – allowing the Munich Philharmonic to blend with the outstanding singing performances in a manner that allows the piece to resonate with almost unbearable sustained tension and menace. There Karl Böhm Elektra would appear to be the best DVD of this opera to date and the one that this attempts to better, but while I haven’t seen that version and can’t compare relative merits, this is nonetheless a strong and faithful production on its own terms.

The starkness of the staging doesn’t really allow the HD presentation on the Blu-ray to shine, finding it difficult to display the huge blocks of black backgrounds, which consequently look quite grainy. The stark white spotlights and the deep reds however are impressively rendered. The sound balance appears to have been carefully mixed in both the PCM Stereo and the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks to allow both singing and orchestration plenty of room to breathe, with deep reverberation on those lower register chords. Other than Cast information, the only extra feature on the disc is a 15-minute Making of Elektra which is an interesting and sufficiently in-depth look at the background of the production.