Braunfels - Die Vögel (Munich, 2020)

Walter Braunfels - Die Vögel (Munich, 2020)

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2020

Ingo Metzmacher, Frank Castorf, Wolfgang Koch, Charles Workman, Michael Nagy, Caroline Wettergreen, Günter Papendell, Bálint Szabó, Emily Pogorelc, Yajie Zhang, Eliza Boom, Theodore Platt, George Vîrban

Staatsoper TV - 31 October 2020

A previous production I saw of Walter Braunfel's Die Vögel for LA Opera in 2009 kept the work fairly neutral in a magical fairy-tale world, but whether you choose to relate the obvious parable in Aristophanes' tale to any contemporary situation or not, it most certainly has something to say about power, social division and inequality. Directed by Frank Castorf (Bayreuth Ring, From the House of the Dead), I think you could pretty much guess beforehand how this was going to be handled in the Bavarian State Opera production. Or broadly guess at least, since while all the more familiar Castorf imagery, symbolism and references are present, it is of course impossible to imagine all the unusual and strange details that the director will throw in.

There is at the very least a case for delving beneath the surface beauty of Braunfels' musical arrangements and trying to get to the root of what the composer might have wanted to say about the underlying themes in the fairy-tale. Braunfels was one of many German and Austrian composers who suffered under the hands of the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage, but his refusal to write an anthem for the Nazi party wouldn't have gone down well either and Braunfels found his music classified as Entartete ("Degenerate"). It's not difficult to see some concerns about the post-first world war divisions in society and where it might lead to in his 1920 opera Die Vögel (The Birds).

In Braunfels' version of the story by Aristophenes, the division is characterised between two men who both have idealistic names, Ratefreund (Loyal Friend) and Hoffegut (Good Hope), who set out to leave behind the world of men, to escape the confines of bourgeois society and culture, and aspire to artistic greatness. They turn to Hoopoe, the Emperor of the birds who was once human, and propose the building of a grand city in the skies, where the birds can reassert their dominion above humans and even the gods. Inevitably the ideal of such a utopia is weakened by the vanity of assuming such power, and Prometheus is there to warn them of where this is all going to lead.

Braunfels started writing Die Vögel before the First World War, and it's not difficult to imagine that the opera might reflect the concerns that the composer could have had about the changes in society during the period of the writing up to its completion in 1919. Castorf's production attempts to reflect those divisions and the human weaknesses that corrupt the idealism of a utopia in harmony with nature. Hoffegut's hope for emotional fulfilment turns into an obsession for the beauty of the nightingale, while Ratefreund's desire for power higher than Zeus leads both to effectively (in this production at least) become Nazis.

It's impossible not to think of Richard Strauss's lushly orchestrated fantasies Die Frau ohne Schatten or Daphne, both musically as well as in the fairy-tale subject matter of Die Vögel. Braunfels composes some ravishing but not particularly challenging music that is at least persuasive of the possibility of a utopia, with bird trills feeding into the score. The second half goes all-out with Hoffegut's wooing of the Nightingale, the long instrumental ballet music for the wedding between Mister Pigeon and Miss Dove, but it's all brought down to earth (literally) with the arrival of Prometheus, and Castorf is determined not to let the fantasy and musical extravagance overshadow the darker message. If anyone can make Die Vögel just that bit edgier it's undoubtedly Frank Castorf.

Inevitably when it comes to this director, it's very much hit and miss. Nothing is going to be presented literally or as a pure allegorical fantasy as in the LA Opera production, and the imagery and the symbolism don't correlate with underlying themes in any obvious way. What works and what doesn't will depend on your perspective, but there's certainly plenty to take in and work with in the set design. For Act I Alexander Denic provides a familiar Castorf 360 degree rotating three-level platform of makeshift rusting scaffolding, steel staircases and plastic sheeting with a wooden hut at the top. The ground floor likewise looks like a refugee camp with shipping containers, wooden fence and chairs.

As you also often find with Castorf there are handheld cameras projecting close-ups and backstage action up onto screens, the set also decorated with little details that reference consumerist society (a Coca-Cola dispenser) as well as more obscure references to the subject of birds in concert posters for The Eagles and one for The Byrds backed by The Flying Burrito Brothers. Running in a similar free-association way, Act II after the interval features a huge billboard of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, with clips from the film showing on an array of satellite dishes as the inevitable horror of this (capitalist?) citadel to man's vanity comes crashing down to earth.

Whether you can make anything clear out of Castorf's production, there's no shortage of ideas and it does look spectacular. The birds' costumes are beautifully extravagant like nightclub showgirls and dancers, with feathers in their hair and plumage on wire harnesses. The arrival of Prometheus amidst the cacophony of life, ideas, references, emotional and political conflict in Castorf's intentionally cluttered stage is extraordinary, capturing the beauty and the ugliness, the mundane and the mysterious, the whole glorious spectacle and the ignominious collapse of it all. Performed in an almost empty theatre, the premiere and final performance of this production before the National Theatre goes into lockdown, certainly lends a strange atmosphere to the piece, where culture is again at the mercy of social upheaval.

The casting and of course the musical performance under Ingo Metzmacher certainly helps contribute to emphasise the contrasts between the lush music and the on-stage furore. I always enjoy Charles Workman's singing and he's very good here as Hoffegut, bringing a suitable little bit of an edge to his usually soft lyrical tenor. It's rather hard for anyone else to be relatable on a human level either - for obvious reasons in this fantasy - but there are songbirds aplenty and excellent performances from Wolfgang Koch as Prometheus, Günter Papendell as Wiedhopf (Hoopoe), Michael Nagy as Ratefreund and Caroline Wettergreen as the Nightingale.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper TV

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte (Glyndebourne, 2019)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Glyndebourne, 2019

Ryan Wigglesworth, André Barbe, Renaud Doucet, David Portillo, Sofia Fomino, Brindley Sherratt, Björn Bürger, Caroline Wettergreen, Michael Kraus, Esther Dierkes, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Katharina Magiera, Jörg Schneider, Alison Rose, Freddie Jemison, Aman De Silva, Stephan Dyakonov, Thomas Atkins, Martin Snell

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Maybe it's the fact that it's Glyndebourne or maybe the popularity of Downton Abbey has made the idea of the English country estate more romantic and idealised, but there does seem to be a tendency to incorporate such old English period ideas into operas produced there. Some are perfectly appropriate and fit perfectly, such as Verdi's Falstaff, some such as Ariadne auf Naxos are a bit of a stretch but nonetheless wholly successful, and Barber's Vanessa seem perfectly at home there. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is a work very much open to imaginative reinterpretation that can reveal new facets to the work - none more so than Romeo Castellucci's production for La Monnaie in Brussels - but even so Barbe and Doucet are undoubtedly going to have to take a few liberties to set The Magic Flute in an Edwardian hotel.

But ideas and imagination are exactly what you want for Mozart's delightful, sometimes enigmatic but most purely enjoyable opera. In Barbe and Doucet's hotel, the three ladies are all maids and Papageno seems to be an eccentric guest with a thing for feather pillows and duvets. Coming down into the lobby in his pyjamas, perhaps in the middle of a nightmare, Tamino is attacked by a monster serpent assembled out of new but still primitive technology. The Queen of the Night is the hotel owner who makes her grand appearance to lay down the law in a clanking lift. The three boys are suitably attired in bellhop uniforms. Sarastro is the head chef, his brotherhood the hotel's cooks. Monostatos down in the basement, below even the servants and maids, shovels coal (which accounts for his black skin) to keep the hotel heated, and it's there that he has dragged Pamina.

The theme of this production of is clear enough and the characters all have vaguely appropriate and recognisable roles in the hierarchy of the hotel, even if it doesn't quite match the stratification of Mozart's society. From the Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Progress however, it does at least correlate with a period of progress, the early twentieth century being on the cusp of the modern age, challenging outdated notions of tradition, which of course includes women's suffrage. That's perhaps not necessarily a development that the Age of Enlightenment libretto is quite ready for ("Women do little but chatter a lot", "Without the guidance of men, women tend to rise above their station"), nor perhaps the Masonic traditions and ceremonies celebrated in Mozart's opera. There is something here however that captures the wind of change and an awareness of class and social inequality that is at least partly consistent with the intentions of the opera.

Something else you expect with The Magic Flute is a magical colourful fairy tale or storybook character and you certainly get that in André Barbe's highly stylised Edwardian designs. The sets are all of the cardboard cut-out variety, using Barbe's hand-drawn sketches and blowing them up to give the impression of a set model expanded to life-size. The detail is impressive, creating a storybook-like background that the colourful characters all stand out against. It really looks stunning. Puppeteers provide the magical elements which fit as suitably old-fashioned theatrical effects. The puppetry is sometimes over-used and a little superfluous, but when used for effect - such as with the armoured men - it makes a great impression. The costumes are marvellous, Edwardian elegance with colourful stylistic cartoon flourishes. Unquestionably, the production design is a thing of beauty and style, the period chosen a useful one to explore some of the themes of the work.

Some, but not all. It doesn't really get to grips with the divisions of physical and spiritual needs of mankind, the struggle between enlightenment versus mysticism, on overcoming darkness and despair, the power of music as a transformative force that is open and accessible to everyone as demonstrated in Die Zauberflöte's wonderful blend of high art and comic pantomime. The elegance of the setting in a grand hotel also precludes any deeper commentary on the class struggle and the belief that all men are equal and can aspire to the betterment of individuals and society. Tamino and Pamina's success in the trial by fire and water for example is to become masters of kitchen skills, which is amusingly staged but doesn't really get to the heart of the work.

There's little to complain about in the singing, which is mostly good even if there's nothing to lift this to another level. Among the more notable performances, Björn Bürger's Papageno is strong and entertaining and Brindley Sherratt is superb, giving one of the most assured and controlled performances I've seen as Sarastro. Jörg Schneider's Monostatos is also well sung and played. There's always a risk that Tamino and Pamina can appear a little bland if insufficiently characterised and they can come across as rather bland. Tamino and Pamina are perhaps somewhat over-privileged because of their upbringing and need to experience the realities of the world in order to find the wisdom to mend the inequalities (perhaps not by great cookery though). Although we have two earnest performances from David Portillo and Sofia Fomino that suit the content and treatment here, neither of them are developed enough to compensate for these weaknesses in characterisation.

Conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, there's a fullness of sound in the orchestration and no sign of any period or historically informed instrumentation. The delivery is a little cool in places, working better in the more buoyant and humorous scenes than in the more solemn and emotional scenes, but that could also be an impression informed by the staging, which can inevitably feel a little stuffy and mannered in places. You don't always get a sense of the varied parts of the work coming together in the way that should give Die Zauberflöte a greater sense of completeness and accomplishment, nor is it entirely successful consequently in getting across the deeper character of the work or the application of its many levels of meaning as they relate to all aspects of human nature.

It's a thoroughly entertaining an impressively designed Die Zauberflöte however and it comes across well on the High Definition presentation on the Opus Arte Blu-ray. The disc contains a short Making Of extra feature that focusses on Barbe and Doucet's creation for Glyndebourne, revealing that their Queen of the Night was inspired by a turn of the century lady owner of a Viennese hotel. The feature also covers the challenge of turning the André Barbe's wonderfully detailed sketches into sets. There's also a Cast Gallery and a very informative booklet essay by Nicholas Till on the creation of Die Zauberflöte and the influences that shaped it.

Links: Glyndebourne

Abrahamsen - The Snow Queen (Munich, 2019)

Hans Abrahamsen - The Snow Queen (Munich, 2019)

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2019

Cornelius Meister, Andreas Kriegenburg, Barbara Hannigan, Rachael Wilson, Katarina Dalayman, Peter Rose, Caroline Wettergreen, Dean Power, Kevin Conners, Owen Willetts, Thomas Gräßle

Staatsoper.TV - 28 December 2019
There would appear to be two significant works in Hans Abrahamsen's recent output that have led to the creation of his first opera The Snow Queen, and they also give some advance indication of how the work would sound. One is the musical meditation on the qualities, properties, texture and character of snow, Schnee, the other is the popular success of Abrahamsen's Ophelia song-cycle Let Me Tell You, with Barbara Hannigan adding her light, agile soprano to the composer's delicate compositions and arrangements.

Those two major works are interconnected within the narrative of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen. Like all fairy tales, there is a darker edge that lies beneath the surface which has been softened over time and narration and director Andreas Kriegenburg isn't wrong in detecting an undercurrent of what we would now recognise as mental illness in the story, one exacerbated by a sense of loss and loneliness. Unfortunately, the libretto for the work remains superficial and never delves into the depths that Abrahamsen and Kriegenburg attempt to explore in the music in the new Bavarian State Opera production of this English language version of the opera following Snedronningen's premiere in Denmark in October 2019.

Essentially the narrative of The Snow Queen involves Gerda (Barbara Hannigan) trying to rescue her brother Kay from the clutches of the Snow Queen. Their grandmother has related a story of a magic mirror created by the devil that makes beautiful things appear ugly. The mirror has shattered into thousands of pieces and shards have pierced the eye and heart of Kay, who now longer recognises the beauty in the world and has fallen into a deep depression or despair.

While still seeking to retain some of the qualities of this inner snow world that combines beauty with coldness and bleakness of winter, Kriegenburg also expresses the fairy-tale world in terms of mental illness, Kay not literally abducted by the Snow Queen, but seemingly institutionalised. His sister Gerda is not far off a state of mental instability herself. She wants to help Kay find himself and does so through a kind of dream fantasy, encountering an old woman in a garden where the nurses have faces of flowers (and later reappear as angels), as well as a Castle Crow and a Forest Crow who lead her to the Ice Palace of the Snow Queen.

In theory, Kriegenberg's approach should be a good way of making the nature of mental illness relatable at the same time as fulfilling what appears to be a Bayerische Staatsoper tradition of finding/creating seasonal works beyond the ever popular Hansel and Gretel. In reality it never seems to weave a magical spell of enchantment, and in large part it's because the libretto really never lives up to the mood or emotional undercurrents of chilly despair that is certainly there in Abrahamsen's delicate complex flurries of music. The libretto is mostly based around Gerda's repetitive search for Kay - 'Where is Kay? I have to find Kay', even though he is physically present in the not terribly original setting of a mental institution with nurses and patients taking the roles of fairy tale characters.

The libretto moreover is very wordy without ever saying anything meaningful, the English parlando never particularly musical or scanning well to fit with the musical arrangements. It does develop into a flow, and there are some beautiful passages notably around the end of Act II before the interval, with a combined trio of Gerda, the King and Queen backed by a chorus. Unable to draw any deeper meaning out of the libretto, or express it through the production design. Barbara Hannigan is of course as impressive as ever and bass Peter Rose an interesting choice for the voice of the Snow Queen, but it all comes across as very pretty and not much else.



Harald B. Thor's sets combine and highlight the disparity between the fantasy with the real-world well enough, using simple plastic sheet backdrops that have an icy appearance, with shredded plastic giving an impression of light, fluffy snow, creating an artificial winter world that also captures a sense of the austere cold world of the mind in isolation. The use of costumes also makes the narrative easy to follow who are doubles and younger versions of Gerda and Kay, but neither Hannigan's expression, Cornelius Meister's conducting nor Kriegenburg's conception are able to bring any real sense of drama to this beautiful but rather lifeless production.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper TV Opera Live

Verdi - La Traviata (Den Norske, 2018)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

Den Norske, 2018

Julia Jones, Tatjana Gürbaca, Aurelia Florian, Matteo Lippi, Yngve Søberg, Caroline Wettergreen, Martin Hatlo, Jens-Erik Aasbø, Johanne Højlund, Rolf Conrad, Eivind Kandal, Pietro Simone, Ole Jørgen Kristiansen

OperaVision

I imagine I'm not the only person to get jaded and avoidant of La Traviata, particularly when it's performed in sanitised Belle Époque period. If you've been listening to a lot of early Verdi in the meantime however - which we've had more of an opportunity to explore in recent years - it is interesting to come back to La Traviata and see it in a context that highlights the level of mastery and developing maturity Verdi had reached. At this stage in his career, Verdi is a musician in complete control of the musical and dramatic expression of his medium, pouring all those considerable forces into a subject that he clearly feels strongly about. There's no two ways about it, La Traviata is a remarkable work, a superb example of craft and passion, and perhaps even genius.

While you might have endured numerous stuffy and unimaginative copy-cat productions - which it has to be said are still capable of delivering a devastating emotional impact - there have been other more adventurous productions of La Traviata willing to explore the work's themes further, testifying to the strength of the musical and structural composition and the presence of universal and contemporary themes within it. The need to fit into a social milieu, society's insatiable hunger for gossip and scandal, and the question of women's rights and the cruelty of their treatment is ever more important in our own times.

Other than it being in modern dress in a very stripped back minimalist set, the Den Norske production directed by Tatjana Gürbaca doesn't initially appear to have much more to add to these themes other than emphasis in certain places. This director however was capable of using selective emphasis well in a similarly minimalist production of Parsifal for Antwerp, so there is some promise of looking at La Traviata afresh. There's a silent pantomime during the overture, with men dropping trousers during Violetta's wild party, Alfredo is there in casual dress in contrast to the other formally-dressed guests, Violetta and her maid Annina collect money out of the pockets of the stupefied drunk revellers, but there's not really much here to make anything new of the run though the Brindisi, the 'Sempre libera' etc. It's admirable, but uninspiring.

All this takes place on a platform stage on top of the theatre stage with little in the way of props, and by removing the accoutrements the work is able to work purely on an emotional plane and move swiftly onto Act II with barely a pause. Alfredo brushing away the debris from the party becomes then another way of showing the two of them wanting to make a 'clean sweep' of the past, even as their old friends look on from the sidelines, sceptical and delighting in the unfortunate turns that prevent the wayward couple thinking that they can exist and succeed outside of the orbit of social expectation and its approval.

There are other hints why society's conventions and expectations might drag them down, and they could strike you as a little jarring as this act and the rest of the opera progresses. Alfredo is unexpectedly physically rough with Violetta's maid Annina, but that could be seen as foreshadowing his later abusive treatment of Violetta at Flora's party and hint at an underlying distasteful attitude towards women in general. That is somewhat over-emphasised by the Matador song at Flora's party, which may well be a display of machismo, but using it as an excuse for the guests to physically maul Violetta feels uncomfortable and doesn't seem merited by the situation, particularly as everyone is later appalled at Alfredo's unacceptable behaviour towards her. Outwardly at least.

A similar kind of discrepancy between outward polite behaviours really hiding less pleasant or perhaps just old-fashioned attitudes towards women is not unexpectedly also brought out in the behaviour of Giorgio Germont. During 'Pura siccome un angelo' his daughter is present on the stage, which isn't new, but there's an interesting spin here in how Germont's pleading to Violetta to step aside for the sake of his daughter is played as his daughter taking her place, to be stripped and abused by society. This and a whole family gathering gets across much better the idea of the perpetuation of attitudes towards women and of the hypocrisy that underlies them. By Act III, the stage has fractured, Violetta largely alone on an island of the stage. Violetta's efforts to resist the tide of social attitudes and achieve happiness is doomed to failure and her sacrifice is played up as a kind of martyrdom, which to a large extent it is intended to be.

Such ideas are good at relating the sentiments and the gender politics of the work to the present, but musically there's less room for invention and interpretation under the musical direction of Julia Jones. The effectiveness of Verdi's composition is plainly evident however in how this gains force as the opera progresses. The flow of the work in that regard is impressive here and the singing is effective. Aurelia Florian is challenged by the extravagant high notes and coloratura, but builds on the character of Violetta, as you have no option but follow her course, and she does carry a strong emotional expressiveness throughout. Matteo Lippi is likewise very expressive in the romantic Italianate style that you would expect for Alfredo. Some interesting ideas and meaningful emphasis is applied here in the Den Norske production and Verdi's masterpiece is undeniable, but I don't feel I need to hear La Traviata again for another while yet.

Links: Den Norske Opera, OperaVision