Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans (Amsterdam, 2025)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans

Dutch National Opera, 2025

Valentin Uryupin, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Elena Stikhina, Allan Clayton, Nadezhda Pavlova, Vladislav Sulimsky, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, John Relyea, Oleksiy Palchykov, Gábor Bretz, Patrick Guetti, Eva Rae Martinez, Tigran Matinyan

ARTE Concert

It may have inspired at least one of the greatest films ever made, but Joan of Arc is a problematic work for an opera, at least as far as Verdi and Tchaikovsky are concerned. The focus on the spiritual side of Joan of Arc, the strength of her inner light and purpose and use her determination to inspire others is perhaps what makes Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc and Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc deeply moving. Opera, particularly in this period (Verdi's Giovanno d'Arco in 1845, Tchaikovsky's in 1879), demanded a little more conventional romance and drama built into the exigencies of wartime duty. That's not to say that the spiritual side of the story is neglected, but can get overwhelmed by the roar of battle cries. Or at least that's been my experience of those rarely performed works.

Dmitri Tcherniakov, controversial in his manner of often reworking or twisting original scenarios to suit his own vision for them but in my opinion infallible when it comes to drawing the inner essence out of great Russian operas, can hardly be faulted then for attempting to 'fix' Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans. Typically he sets this production far from its historical 15th century battlefield, but not only that, to further downplay any idea of war heroism, he already has Joan placed under arrest and on trial at the start of the opera. In Act I that successfully straddles the line between courtroom and town hall meeting, where Joan's refusal to behave as she is expected to do as a young woman and submit to marriage is already a crime laid against her, the events leading to it then viewed as scenes in flashback.

Seven weeks into her trial, some of the town folk are getting frustrated with the young woman's deranged visions, but with war threatening Orléans, fear takes hold and the sense of grace that exudes from the charismatic Joan is nonetheless seductive, bringing hope. Opera has the advantage here of being able to convey that characteristic in the voice (although the lack of a speaking voice certainly did not detract from Carl Th. Dreyer's 1928 silent movie masterpiece). Inevitably messing with time lines and locations in Tcherniakov's version causes some misalignment with the opera plot, but rightly the intent is not to make the slightly ludicrous or at least unfashionable dated dramatic historical action credible, but rather to serve to bring out the deeper spiritual side of the work.

Spiritual maybe, but as he has made plain in everything from Dialogues des Carmélites to Parsifal, Tcherniakov is not going to depict any of Joan's visions in terms of religious or quasi-religious mysticism, but from a profoundly humanistic viewpoint. Which does not mean idealistic either, particularly in this case where the outcome of those deep convictions lean towards fighting and killing. Joan receives her messages from the lights above the fans in the town hall/courtroom, rather than any celestial visitation. There is no time either for earnest stilted declamation (or subtitles), which I thought undermined this work the last time I viewed it, and accordingly characters here are seen behaving irreverently or mockingly whenever it occurs. The long scene between King Charles VII and Agnes Sorel works partly due to this but credit must also be given to the singing performances of Allan Clayton and Nadezhda Pavlova, who are outstanding here. That's also a measure of good direction, subverting pomposity without undermining the work, just shifting the focus towards the work's real strengths and the purpose which is to highlight the experience and fate of Joan subjected to the judgement of her society.

The same applies to Tchaikovsky's roaring choruses and bombastic score which, as I observed before, is somewhat over the top in his vaunting the nationalistic heroism of warriors, but when turned inward it can be very powerful indeed, and it is well directed towards that in Valentin Uryupin's conducting of the Netherlands Philharmonic. It's not entirely possible to eliminate the jingoism in the libretto, but Tcherniakov never lets that side of the declamations dominate. Evidently, taking it out of the historical period and adopting a more modern perspective on the actions of the state helps make that case; the abuse of the prevailing religious and political establishment is more recognisable in this context and it hits all the harder for it. Even Joan's glorious acclaim from the people is subverted here, seen as nothing more than a hallucination of her own fevered mind having been locked up and abused in a prison cell. Aligned with Tchaikovsky's music it's incredibly powerful, setting up the underlying tragedy of the young woman's treatment in the run up to the dramatic conclusion. 

If you were to take the opera's libretto and setting literally as the historical Joan of Arc, you would have to think that Joan's divinity or position as a national hero and feminist is compromised here in Tcherniakov's vision. She becomes a tool, her mental illness (the titles above the stage clearly indicating that these are "hallucinations") turning towards religious fervour and used as a way of controlling the war narrative, leading the people to killing and death for the benefit of the ruling powers. But whatever perspective you want to place on her legacy, it's not the historical Joan that is of interest to Tcherniakov, but her underlying humanity and her mistreatment at their hands of the authorities. The DNO production uses Tchaikovsky’s operatic version of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic account, whose adherence to historical facts is hardly the most accurate account (nor meant to be), as a way of bringing all those forces together, showing how they work and how they use people for their own ends.

There are no real surprises there as far as the look, feel and outlook of a typical Dmitri Tcherniakov interpretation of an operatic work, which for all its apparent divergence from the original intent, supports the music, brings the opera up to date and indeed validates its deeper truths. What stands out then are indeed those musical qualities of Tchaikovsky at full tilt, yet maintaining those familiar lyrical qualities and tragic elements more familiar from Eugene Onegin, Iolanta (both of which Tcherniakov has directed) and The Queen of Spades; lyrical qualities that particularly when sung with authentic Russian voices can be very impressive. All the cast are excellent in that regard, but Elena Stikhina as Joan is hugely impressive, giving a breathtaking, committed performance that rises to the occasion, holding you captivated through the young woman's glory and torment as much as Falconetti did when she immortalised Joan of Arc in Dreyer's film version. High praise indeed.

Links: Dutch National Opera, ARTE Concert

Stephan - Die ersten Menchen (Amsterdam, 2021)

Rudi Stephan - Die ersten Menchen

Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam - 2021

François-Xavier Roth, Calixto Bieito, Kyle Ketelsen, Leigh Melrose, Annette Dasch, John Osborn

ARTE Concert

Many German and Austrian composers of the late Romantic period had their careers cut short by the wars that scarred the first half of the 20th century, but unlike the composers who fell foul of the Nazi regime, antisemitism and opposition to decadent subject matters in their opera compositions, Rudi Stephan's promising career was brought to an abrupt and tragic end at the age of 28, shot after only 16 days as a conscripted soldier on the Russian front in 1915. His only opera Die ersten Menchen (The First Humans), completed in 1914 at the start of the war and performed for the first time five years after his death, is one of the great 'lost' major works of this period, Stephan's untimely death consequently representing another great loss to the opera world suffered during these years.

It might sound like it has a Biblical subject, but subtitled 'An Erotic Mystery', Die ersten Menchen's story of Adam and Eve taps into the similarly controversial subject of taboo lusts and violent desires that Richard Strauss had recently explored in his extension of the musical language of Salome and Elektra. And since we're effectively dealing with the Garden of Eden, with references to creation and procreation of the human race, with gardens of lush fruits and rising sap, blooming flowers and forbidden fruit, we're evidently dealing with similar archetypal forces and images, likewise brought to vivid and colourful expression in Stephan's music score for the opera.

And indeed the woman, Chawa (Eve) sees the role of procreation and populating the earth as the primary purpose of her nature and being, identifying with the Spring season. Adahm (Adam) on the other hand identifies with Autumn, seeing his work as having ripened and come to fruition, at a stage in a cycle that needs nurturing and renewal. Their sons Kajin (Cain) and Chabel (Abel) each have their own urges and differing natures. It's too much for Kajin to handle, and his mind gets twisted, his head filled with tormenting desires that he is unable to control, lusting for a wild woman, for pleasure and gratification. Chabel on the other hand seeks a higher spiritual purpose in his contemplation of the universe, the infinite and the eternal God.

Adahm and Chawa are swayed by the beauty of Chabel's vision, expressed as much in the soft soaring lyricism of his voice as it is in the beauty of the imagery he evokes. His visions are persuasive, but in their own way as demented as Kajin's, whose lusts eventually drive him towards his own mother. Like any work that deals in archetypes - and they don't come much more significant than Adam and Eve - there are degrees of emphasis and interpretation. Stephan, and the original work, all suggest that there are disturbing elements to any fanaticism, to a singular vision, and that a balance is necessary - and evidently, this reflects to some extent the world in which Stephan was living at the beginning of another war that would engulf Europe and so quickly bring about his own death.

The director Calixto Bieito doesn't need to set this in the Garden of Eden to highlight or give emphasis to the Biblical association of the work or Stephan's treatment of playwright Otto Borngräber's controversial play and libretto. Some of it might seem silly, such as Chabel sacrificing a cuddly toy that spurts blood, but there is something disturbing in this and it is no less effective for its refusal to conform to hackneyed imagery that may no longer hold impact and meaning. Nor, since the strength of the work lies in archetypes, in the psychology, in the pathology, in the music - does it need elaborate set designs and high directorial concepts to make it come alive and speak directly to an audience.

The reconfiguration of the Amsterdam opera house for social distancing presents Bieito with new ways of staging the work. Since this opera calls for a large orchestra that could hardly effectively distance in an orchestra pit, the orchestra are spread out in tiers at the back of the stage behind a transparent screen. The director makes good use - not overuse - of the screen by projecting overhead camera angles and other imagery that works with and intensifies the drama, such as it is. The family unit is suggested by a house-shaped lightbox and a dining table bearing a colourful array of ripened, rotting and crushed fruit juices and seeds. If the intention - borne out by the over-ripe music - is to show an orgiastic descent into decadence and murder, the director gets the messy madness of the first family across, and it doesn't say much for the origins of the whole human race.

Whether - like Wilde's 'Salome' - the libretto actually says anything subversive and meaningful about a corrupt society with violent dangerous lusts that hides behind a facade of respectability, or whether it just strives for similar poetic colour and controversy, Stephan matches the tone of the libretto as successfully as Strauss adapts Wilde with necessary overstatement. What it does clearly get across with some measure of success is the enormity of the very first experience of death, matching that significant first death of a human, slain by his brother with the true horror of the death of so many others to come at a time when war has just broken out, a war that will very soon kill see the composer also killed by his "brother".

Alas! A great red wave is rolling this way!
Human bones float in it, doleful skulls, a quivering heart
The future blood of future humanity!
The thousands of men slain by their human brothers!

The music lives up to the grandeur of the language (exclamation marks aplenty!) as well as the indescribable horror of the setting. François-Xavier Roth conducts the orchestra through the glorious dramatic sweep of Stephan's score, which is truly ravishing. If the significance of the characters and the text of the libretto is a little obscure in places, the musical setting of the voices by Stephan is also impressive, pushing the performers to full expression. John Osborn gets a plum role as the lyrically soaring Chabel, which he delivers superbly, as always. Kyle Ketelsen's Adahm and Leigh Melrose's deeper conflicted Kajin are just as impressive in their respective roles.

Comparisons to Strauss's Elektra are most felt at the start of the second act of Die ersten Menchen, where Chawa feels the isolation of her position, the loss of a family turned inward against itself and lets out her frustrations in a howl of rage. It's consequently similarly challenging on a dramatic soprano vocal level to cut through the vast orchestral forces and Annette Dasch plays it well, certainly pushed at the higher range, but retaining that fine measure of lyrical expression that is characteristic of her voice.

Links: Dutch National Opera, ARTE Concert

Landi - La Morte d'Orfeo (Amsterdam, 2018)

Stefano Landi - La Morte d'Orfeo

Dutch National Opera, 2018

Christophe Rousset, Pierre Audi, Cecilia Molinari, Renato Dolcini, Alexander Miminoshvili, Gaia Petrone, Rosina Fabius, Magdalena Pluta, Juan Francisco Gatell, Kacper Szelążek, Emiliano Gonzales Toro, Salvo Vitali

Naxos - Blu-ray

The myth of Orpheus has not only been the inspiration to some of the greatest works of opera ever written, it could even be said to have inspired the creation of opera itself. Certainly some of operas most important key works, namely Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1774), are works that still carry every bit of their original power, beauty and meaning from several hundred years ago through to the present day. Every new production of these works seems to find endless inspiration in them and it's not difficult to see why since the story of Orpheus is about transforming life into art that lasts through the ages. The moral that there's a high price to be paid for the artist who pours his life into immortal works is however conveniently glossed over somewhat in these early opera versions of the myth. Not so in Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo.

Orpheus's journey to the Underworld to bring back his dead wife Eurydice is not the whole story, and there is certainly no happy ending of the kind that was imposed by dramatic convention on Gluck's opera, but rather there is more to be learned in the myth that makes its meaning even more tragic and illuminating. The fate of Orpheus is taken up from where Monteverdi left off in La Morte d'Orfeo composed in 1619 by Stefano Landi who, as a Papal composer, was nonetheless likewise adapting the story for his own audience. Orpheus does indeed pay a high price for his infractions against the order of the gods, and not just though his insistence on reviving the dead Eurydice, but for the sins of pride and artistic excess. For the sinning against the purity of women and the sacred bond of marriage, he is ripped apart by the women of the maenads.

Orpheus might have the power to charm the God and the spirits of the Underworld with his music, but there are other stronger forces at work on the artist and Orpheus is torn between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Landi personifies that struggle in the first scene of La Morte d'Orfeo, and Pierre Audi directing this Dutch National Opera production (his last production after 30 years as artistic director there) depicts that simply and directly. Fate has decreed that Orpheus die on his birthday and Orpheus is shown as helpless against the coming of the dawn, Aurora, and the breezes that sidle up against him, waking him to the fate that Fate has in store for him. All of these forces have physical form and are personified, as also is Fury.

Orpheus however is oblivious to his fate, a demigod who perhaps even believes himself exempt from the fate of ordinary mortals. Follow the path of virtue, advises his father, beware of women and their wiles. "He who does not honour love is better off dead". When Orpheus slights Bacchus however, his followers, the maenads call for vengeance. There is something typically anti-women in Laudi's depiction of this situation for his Roman Catholic commissioners, but there are two ways of looking at this and Audi turns it around for the #MeToo age where it becomes a cautionary tale not for the benefit of men to beware of women leading them into sin, but that a reckoning will come for those who mistreat and abuse women.

Up to that point much of the opera is fairly dry, delivered mostly through early opera style recititative and choruses, with little in the way of arias. There's little that Pierre Audi can do to enliven the lack of conventional dramatic action. He keeps the direction simple and doesn't clutter the smaller scale stage of the Muziekgebouw theatre in Amsterdam, restricting expression to costumes of pale colours and blood red lighting for the drama. The design has a few of the familiar Audi aesthetics but nothing that distracts from the purpose of the work, an upside down flowering tree with blood red blooms the only real symbolism on the stage.

If there's a lack of expression in the dramatic action and expression, all the colour is there however in the characters and personification of the forces of nature, and that is very much brought out by Landi's musical composition and the beautiful textures and colours of the baroque instruments. It's assisted considerably in that respect by Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques interpreting the score. There's less of the usual rhythmic drive that Rousset brings to this kind of period music, but this is not music for dance as it would be in a French tragédie lyrique. As anyone who has heard William Christie's revelatory Caen production of Landi's Il Sant'Alessio will expect, this is much more in the realm of spiritual or religious music that Landi more frequently worked in.

The greatness of the work then only really becomes evident with the death of Orpheus. Incredibly the dramatic scene of him being ripped apart by the maenads takes place off-stage and is instead recounted vividly in the music and singing of Fileno, who tells Calliope, the mother of Orpheus, how he witnessed her son destroyed even as he tried to appease the furies with his music and singing. It's by far the longest scene in the opera, the centrepiece, the emotional heart of the work and it's particularly impressive here for the lyrical singing and heartfelt delivery of Renato Dolcini. That tone is maintained for the remainder of the work, with organ music piping in behind Orpheus's funeral lament. It truly elevates the work to a thing of great beauty.

The structure and arrangement of the drama is not conventional then, and it doesn't put Orpheus at the centre of the opera - he actually has a lesser role in a small cast that play multiple roles - but rather as the title of the opera makes evident, it puts the death of Orpheus at the centre. Even the idea of Orpheus having some consolation that he might be reunited in death with his lost love Eurydice is taken from him. Charon and Mercury have bad news for him on that score, as Eurydice has taken the waters of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. If the artist is to live on it is through his legacy and Orpheus urged to drink the same waters, leave behind his earthly desires and become a star in the heavenly firmament.

The 2018 DNO production of Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Naxos. It's a fine production and a good recording that really serves this beautiful rare work well, particularly on the High Definition Blu-ray release with its lossless High Resolution stereo and surround soundtracks. The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 surround in particular gives space to that beautiful open percussive sound of the period instruments. The booklet included contains a full tracklist, a brief synopsis and an informative and insightful commentary on the work by Pierre Audi, who clearly understands the intentions of the work and brings those across wonderfully in this production. The disc includes subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Dutch National Opera

Strauss - Salome (Amsterdam, 2017)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam - 2017

Daniele Gatti, Ivo Van Hove, Malin Byström, Evgeny Nikitin, Lance Ryan, Doris Soffel, Peter Sonn, Hanna Hipp, James Creswell, Roger Smeets

Culturebox - June 2017

It's isn't often obvious to judge what play or opera you are looking at just from a view of the sets alone in an Ivo van Hove production, but the set for the one-act drama of Salome for the Dutch National Opera is unmistakable. It might not be in the obvious Biblical setting, but the tones, contrasts and the basic functional requirements for Strauss's opera, or indeed Wilde's play, are all there. A large frigid moon hangs over the scene where an elegant room bathed in red light set to the back of the stage, and at the front is terrace like a circus arena with a hole at the centre.

Whether it's modern or Biblical, the hole is always more than just an entrance to the cistern where Jokanaan, John the Baptist is imprisoned in Herod's palace. It's a place where Herod and Heriodas want to hide the witness who speaks out about their decadence. It's also a gaping maw of desire, a dark abyss that exerts an irresistible attraction to their daughter Salome, a young woman who has grown up in this house of corruption. Those undercurrents of forbidden lusts are there in Wilde's original 1891 work, a play that still has the capacity to shock. Salome is a play dealing with a taboo subject whose importance still hasn't been fully acknowledged I feel, darker and more daring than the image of corruption and decadence in 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray', both of which now take a back seat to the image of Oscar Wilde as wit represented more often on stage by his Victorian comedies and social satires.

Richard Strauss however clearly recognised the power of the work and its underlying attack on social conformity when he first saw the controversial play in German translation in its first European performances, the original (in French and in English) having been banned in England. It's an outright attack on the hypocrisy of outward respectability covering over darker impulses, and it chimes with a climate of Viennese turn of the century Freudian analysis and exploration of repressed self-destructive impulses and bloodlust festering under a layer of surface respectability; an impulse that would soon be unleashed in the horrors of the Great War.

It was also a time when music was looking for a new expression or outlet for these new modernist views. Strauss retains the post-Wagnerian lush lyrical romanticism and exoticism that reflects the elegant surface of social respectability, but found an extraordinary new musical language to probe beneath the surface, a darker and more violent edge that lies within its unsettling dissonance, sudden shifts of tone and juddering declines and suspensions. As one of the most daring pieces of music written to that point, changing the face of music for a century, or at least pointing the way towards it, it's not only in Strauss's opera that Wilde's Salome is more frequently presented, but it's in it that it really lives.

A staging of the work then should also be radical and have the capacity to shock, or at least find a way that represents the spirit of the original. On the surface, Ivo van Hove's production isn't the most radical, but in the direction of the performers at least, he does find a way of getting to the heart of what remains compelling and shocking about the work. It need hardly be said that the central tension in the drama is between Salome and Jokanaan. How Herod, Herodias and Narraboth interact with Salome is very much contributory to the direction the work does in and its overall impact, but the focus here is very much on the pivotal confrontation between Salome's worldview and the one that Jokanaan both represents and decries.

Salome is the offspring of this corrupt society that hides its true face. In her generation's twisted view of the world, she wants to bend it to satisfy her own desires and at the same time turn her power towards exposing the true nature of this hypocritical society and completely destroy it. Speaking out against that hypocrisy and indulging those desires. This small incidental drama of a Biblical nature sets out to do achieve nothing less than complete annihilation. As Wilde prophetically recognises the fate that would befall him later, such actions and indulgence comes at a cost and ultimately prove to be self-destructive. Somehow Strauss's music carried the same seed of self-destruction in it, a darker abyss that Strauss would soon turn away from himself.

It's asking a lot of a young singer like Malin Byström, but under Ivo van Hove's direction she largely succeeds. There's a youthful innocence there at first, with a dark dirty desire from an abused corrupted childhood that is straining to get out. Jokanaan provides that foil to set herself against and test where the limits lie. She's not sure at first what she wants, but becomes dangerously capable of pushing taboo boundaries. Rejected by Evgeny Nikitin's solemn restrained Jokanaan, Byström handles Salome's transition over from pleading princess to violent murderous intent brilliantly, but it's also underscored well and delivered with jarring intensity from Daniele Gatti in the DNO orchestra pit. She's a dangerous spark waiting to ignite and Herod and her mother supply all the fuel she needs to set the world on fire.

The mechanics of the stage directions are mostly adhered to in Van Hove's production, but with a few varying points of emphasis. The moon gets larger, Narraboth kills himself in full public view looking down at the abyss, not away in some dark corner. Projections play a role, as they often do in the Belgian director's productions. They come into play mainly during the Dance of the Seven Veils, which is danced by Byström, but enhanced to show her dancing not for Herod but Jokanaan. The prophet's head is not delivered on a silver platter, but Jokanaan himself, covered head to foot in gore in a shallow basin that Salome wallows in. He's not entirely dead either, or perhaps moves only in Salome's head, crawling to an illicit and bloody union. If there's any contemporary commentary in Ivo van Hove's production it eludes me, but as an image of how Wilde and Strauss incautiously explored the direction society was going in, the DNO production is immensely powerful.

Links: DNO, Culturebox

Henze - Das Floß der Medusa (Amsterdam, 2018)

Hans Werner Henze - Das Floß der Medusa

Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam 2018

Ingo Metzmacher, Romeo Castellucci, Dale Duesing, Bo Skovhus, Lenneke Ruiten

ARTE Concert - 26 March 2018

Romeo Castellucci's productions seem to be well-suited to the drawing out the allegorical aspects out of works that have a level of musical and thematic abstraction that can be adapted to address current affairs and contemporary subjects of interest, albeit often somewhat obliquely. Hence we've seen Castellucci bring his unique individual touch to Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, Bach's St Matthew's Passion, to Wagner's Tannhäuser and Parsifal, but also managed to approach and make real mythological themes in Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice. In all those works there is also a very marked struggle between two different and almost diametrically opposed forces, between life and death, the physical and the spiritual, the word and the deed.

There's another world very much concerned with strong divisions, in the space between life and death, but also with a political undercurrent suggested but never made explicit in Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa). Again, the work is not a conventional work; an oratorio rather than an opera, and again Castellucci strives not only to find ways to illustrate the nature of the opposing forces at play and the relationship between them, but find a modern allegorical way to illustrate and give them a relatable contemporary relevance, and also in some way that is difficult to define, turn the focus back on the either self-reflexively on the theatrical nature of opera or even back onto the audience.

The opposing forces in Henze's work appear to be easily identifiable but in reality also hold complex layers which are related to the time it was created in 1968. On a surface level, Das Floß der Medusa is very obviously inspired by and named after Théodore Géricault famous painting "Le Radeau de la Méduse", painted not long after the notorious naval incident it depicts. In 1816, the French naval frigate the Medusa was shipwrecked not far from its destination, but still 108 miles off the coast of Senegal. The governor, the captain and the ships officers took to the available lifeboats, leaving 154 crew to put together a makeshift raft that was initially towed, but then cut off and left to the mercy of the currents. When the raft was picked up 13 days later, only 15 people survived on the raft.

There's a clear commentary on the class divisions between those privileged to be saved and those left to fend for themselves in what turned out to be a horrendous journey, subjected to deprivation, starvation, dehydration and cannibalism that caused an enormous scandal. Théodore Géricault's painting, created in 1819, depicting the moment that the survivors first spy and attempt to attract the attention of the dot of a ship on the horizon, is painted like a glorious memorial to those who suffered, defiantly provocative and unflinching of the reality of what was endured by those on the raft of the Medusa, and of a corrupt regime that allows such inequalities to persist.

Similar political and social implications can be found in Henze's oratorio, written in 1968 in another period of social and political activism to which Henze was very much connected. Das Floß der Medusa however doesn't make any overt reference to then contemporary issues, depicting the journey and fate of those aboard the raft of the Medusa strictly in historical terms. The nature of the struggle between two vast forces is very much evident in the make-up of the roles of the oratorio. Only one person is identified, Jean-Charles, the mulatto at the head of the raft who is seen waving a red shirt at the approaching rescue ship, the other two solo roles being Death and Charon who acts as narrator and as a guide to lead the chorus on board the raft from the side of the living to the dead.

Fairly stark divisions then that draw the lines between the living and the dead, between the privileged and the poor, but also the struggle that each individual on the raft has to make, the "perspective of an end that is separated only by courage or cowardice", which is how I think it is described. Romeo Castellucci's innovative approach, using projection screens, text and symbols, contributes a few other levels that bring out the underlying political subtext of the work and place it in a modern day context where the message is not overt, but hard to miss all the same. Like his Orphée et Eurydice - and indeed his production of Moses und Aron - there's a large screen that places a barrier that highlights the division between the message and the work, between the audience and the performers.

Playing out in parallel to the story of the Raft of the Medusa, Castellucci projects a film made in present-day Senegal, where a Muslim man, Mamadon Ndaye, is brought out to the exact point where the Medusa was shipwrecked and left in the sea for four days. Without having to make it explicit, there is evidently a commentary to be made about the inequality between the prosperous nations of the west and the poorer nations suffering disease, poverty, war and torture, having to take to attempt to migrate and seek asylum on flimsy boats on dangerous seas. It doesn't even have to be explicit, the footage of a man alone out in the middle of an immense sea is powerful enough, particularly when it is projected on top of the story of what happened to the crew of the Medusa some 200 years previously.

But of course, nothing is that simple with Castellucci. You might wonder why Death wears a yellow waterproof jacket and why she operates a movie camera that is trains on the audience (projecting back an empty theatre towards the conclusion). Self referential elements, breaking down the barrier between reality and theatre, also appear in the form of the actual names of the chorus - seen bobbing in the background behind the sea, sometimes as dummies - being projected on the screen, with their date of birth and the date of their 'death' being the 23 March 2018 (the date of the recording of this performance at the Dutch National Opera). Géricault's painting is also referenced in reverse as a geometric framing, while other unusual technological objects, neon poles and circles (see Moses und Aron again) descend from above.

Whatever it all means, it does nonetheless convey in a very abstract fashion the experience of people and reality being pushed to its limits, to minds becoming unhinged, of a world literally turning upside down. Visually striking, very much unconventional and avant-garde in its theatrical presentation with everything appearing immersed in the sea, when combined with Henze's relentless flow, its the rises and falls into violent outbursts meticulously controlled by Ingo Metzmacher, the hypnotic siren-call of the chorus proves irresistible, drawing crew and audience alike into its thrall. Lenneke Ruiten's extraordinary performance singing Death makes the certain end feel just as inescapable, which indeed, despite his rescue is also the fate of Bo Skovhus's determined Jean-Charles. It looks like Mamadon Ndiaye at least makes it out of the water, but you are left in no uncertain terms with as much an indication as it is possible to put on a stage of what must be endured every day for the thousands who take to the seas to endure similar horrors to the crew of the raft of the Medusa.

Links: DNO, ARTE Concert, YouTube

Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder (Amsterdam, 2014)

Arnold Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder

Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam - 2014

Marc Albrecht, Pierre Audi, Burkhard Fritz, Emily Magee, Anna Larsson, Marcus Marquardt, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder is an unusual piece that is difficult to classify, but it's also a work that it is difficult to associate with one of the most radical composers of all time. Gurre-Lieder uses a Romantic musical language that is not typical of the Schoenberg who would shake up the old traditions with serialism, yet it comes at a time when the composer was already moving away from the traditional musical forms. Orchestrated like an opera, Gurre-Lieder certainly doesn't fit easily into the song-cycle, cantata or oratorio format, but neither would it appear to have the dramatic qualities for an opera. For a work that nonetheless remains one of Schoenberg's best known and most performed works, it's surprising that no one has attempted to adapt it to the stage until this 2014 production at the Dutch National Opera.

The fact that there is no clear narrative form to Gurre-Lieder might however work in its favour when it comes to presenting in on the stage. There are no predetermined stage directions to be adhered to and there are no preconceptions about how the work ought to look and be presented. There might be a few clues in its origins, references and the period it derives from, but a director is free to make whatever they want of the songs, the sentiments and the arrangements. Whatever images Gurre-Lieder with its grand, lush orchestration might have conjured in the mind previously however, it's unlikely to be anything like the setting that Pierre Audi devises for the Amsterdam stage.

As abstract as it might appear there is clearly an effort made by the director and the music director to get inside the work's complicated life, its history and period, at the same time as it tries to illustrate what there is of Gurre-Lieder's sparse storyline. Based on a German translation of a series of poems written in 1900 by Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen, the Gurre-Lieder recount the affair and the consequences of the love of King Waldemar for a young local girl called Tove. Amidst premonitions, laments and mourning, Tove dies at the hands of Queen Helwig and Waldermar loses his mind, imagining summoning an army of the dead to avenge her death before he too expires in a blaze of remorse.

...Or something like that. To be honest, I've never really paid much attention to the lyrical content of Gurre-Lieder's Romantic meditations and expressions, which is probably why it's such a good idea to try and put the work across visually in dramatic terms. Pierre Audi's concept works in at least giving the listener something to think about in this dimension of the work, even if it still proves difficult to hold one's attention and derive any deeper meaning out of the verse. It's not great storytelling, but it can be evocative, dramatic and poetic, particularly when it is combined with Schoenberg's gorgeous post-Wagnerian musical compositions.

And post-Wagnerian, neo-Romanticism is very much the tone here in terms of subject and execution, so it's not surprising that Audi's production reflects that to some extent. The staging and subject (more so than the music) evokes gothic imagery that you might expect to find in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, there's a fatalistic love affiar that is reminiscent vaguely of Tristan und Isolde (in this case the music leads more towards the comparison), while the lush orchestration and fairytale elements can put one in mind also of Strauss's near contemporary Die Frau ohne Schatten, a work that also draws heavily from the period, from the thinking and art movements that were developing and cross-pollinating in Vienna at this time.

If there's one overall consistent theme as such that the DNO production applies as a concept for representing the work on the stage, it's perhaps this idea of great change. That's applicable to the age the work was composed in as much as to the great change in musical forms that Gurre-Lieder heralds. There's a nightmarish quality to the production that comes with this fear of death, the end of one era and the beginning of another. The anxiety particularly affects Waldemar, but the premonitions of the Wood Dove and the raising of a dead army all carry a fearful edge. Schoenberg's glorious choral finale of the rising sun on a new day certainly holds out promise for the future, but with Waldemar dying, there is a certain ambiguity there. The sun will still rise regardless and change will come, for better or worse.

There might not be anything particularly revelatory here, but the stage production does represent the essence of the work and, at the very least, it invites the listener to consider anew what the work is about much more so than a more conventional concert performance would. Marc Albrecht's conducting of the piece also benefits from these visual cues and highlights the very particular variety of musical language that Schoenberg uses in the work. The singing is perhaps not quite strong enough to carry over those huge orchestral forces, but Burkhard Fritz is wonderfully lyrical as Waldemar, Emily Magee impresses as Tove and Anna Larsson stands out as the Wood Dove. The other roles have the same Romantic lyricism and are well handled by Marcus Marquardt and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. The DNO chorus are, needless to say, mindblowingly good, which is a distinct advantage for the impact of this work's finale.

The chorus are indeed the main focus of the extra feature on the Blu-ray disc. DNO productions on Opus Arte releases always include an excellent interview/making of feature on the background to the production and rehearsals, and this one is well worth viewing. There's also a Cast Gallery and an informative essay on the work by Gavin Plumley, along with a brief synopsis in the enclosed booklet. The HD image and sound options are superb, really putting across the qualities of the production and the performance. The singing is mixed a little low in the DTS HD Master-Audio 5.1 mix, but there's a better balance and perhaps more impact in the LPCM stereo mix.

Links: DNO

Wagner - Parsifal (DNO, 2016)

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Dutch National Opera, 2016

Marc Albrecht, Pierre Audi, Anish Kapoor, Ryan McKinny, Bjarni Thor Kristinsson, Günther Groissböck, Christopher Ventris, Bastiaan Everink, Alexandra Petersamer, Elena Pankratova, Marcel Reijans, Roger Smeets, Lisette Bolle, Rosanne van Sandwijk, Erik Slik, Jeroen de Vaal, Maartje Rammeloo, Lisette Bolle, Inez Hafkamp, Tomoko Makuuchi, Caroline Cartens, Rosanne van Sandwijk, Eva Kroon

Amsterdam - 9th December 2016

Parsifal is such a unique piece of music drama that it permits many ways of presenting it; there's no right way and there's no wrong way. It has little of the dramatic action that you would more commonly find in opera and is limited in the stage directions it needs to put its message across, so it's surprising how versatile and open to exploration Parsifal remains. The conceptual, symbolic or abstract approach however seems more like its natural medium, rather than say a production that explores character or one that attempts to provide an interpretation of the meaning of the work. Other approaches are valid however, which of course is a measure of its greatness as a supreme work of art, which seems to me to be something that is indisputable.

That was my impression anyway coming out of the Pierre Audi's production of the work at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, which suggests that they must have got something right. Just quite how they did it is, as is often the case with this opera, somewhat more difficult to define, but surely it is at least by remaining true to the spirit of Wagner's intentions for his final masterpiece. That doesn't mean that you have to be slavishly literal however, and Pierre Audi's direction and Anish Kapoor's sets are firmly in the conceptual mode. By which I mean that they attempt to create a visual representation of the deeper meaning of the work rather than holding to its surface representation. And by which I mean there is scarcely any overt religious iconography, but plenty to allude to the work's spiritual and transcendent content.

That very much depends on how much you want to read into it, but obviously when it comes to such an approach, the onus must be placed on the individual member of the audience. For me, the representation of Montsalvat as a solid mass of jagged rocks bathed in blood-red light gave it the appearance of a raw open wound. That is evidently a key image in relation to this opera, and in fact it's also the image of a bleeding wound that is projected onto the screen during the overture. The pain and suffering endured by Amfortas, an eternal wound from the spear that that pierced Christ on the cross, is so great that it can't simply be confined to a single body; it engulfs the whole of Montsalvat. Everyone there feels the pain, and if you can't hear that in the music, you aren't listening closely enough.

Arguably that is what the staging should be striving to represent by whatever means necessary. It's more important to sense that than it is to see medieval knights and the Holy Grail on the stage. The second scene of Act I, the transubstantiation scene, literally builds on the first scene. The configuration is slightly altered and wooden scaffolding around it bears the faithful. There's a sense here of the need to build the world anew, build upon the pain, putting it to use. The wooden beams picked up by the reinvigorated knights are not crosses then, but crossbeams that symbolise or serve as building blocks.

Anish Kapoor's designs for Klingsor's castle and gardens in Act II are even more abstract, consisting only of a large circular mirror of uneven distorted clarity hanging above the stage, the background of the set merely a curved black wall. Again, it's a representation of the tone of this Act, the world seen through a glass darkly (a Biblical reference without the religious iconography). Reflected in this mirror the flower maidens are indeed a dazzling kaleidoscopic display that holds Parsifal back from what it is he must do. Kundry attempts to bring some light to Parsifal's quest for enlightenment, but it still represents a distortion of the truth. It is only when Parsifal recalls the suffering of Amfortas that his eyes are opened and he is able to recognise the truth for himself.

Act III is the exact opposite of how this Act is usually represented. Instead of a post-apocalyptic Montsalvat, with Titurel dead, Amfortas surely unable to endure further pain, and the faith of Gurnemanz and the knights in tatters, Kapoor depicts a clean, open, ordered scene. It's all pale blue, with geometric shapes on a bare minimal stage, the figures all wearing futuristic robes like a scene from a Robert Wilson opera production (incidentally, I haven't seen his Parsifal, but Robert Wilson doing any Wagner and preferably a Ring Cycle would be my ultimate dream production - could someone ask him, please?). The third act however is about redemption, and that is followed through with the associated Christian rituals of feet-washing and baptism, as well as consideration of death and the afterlife.

If it was difficult to pin the production down to a definitive statement, concept or interpretation, there was no mistaking what the music was telling you, and it's there that the 'truth' of Parsifal is there to be revealed. Marc Albrecht conducted with a measured pace, never allowing the work to float or drift, keeping instead a consistent drive - although I might have liked a slower more contemplative Good Friday scene. It was the 'shaping' of the orchestra that counted for more here, lifting the sweeps of strings, emphasising the plaintive tone of the cellos and the spiritual uplift of the brass, with the percussion hammering home the truth. It was an utterly exhilarating performance that demonstrated the beauty and the brilliance of Wagner's orchestration for Parsifal, as well as its ability to reach deeper places.

The performance of the 9th December was slightly delayed while the DNO flew in a replacement for an indisposed Petra Lang. The disappointment of not seeing Lang sing and perform the role of Kundry was however alleviated by the promise of the replacement being Elena Pankratova, who most recently sang the role (impressively) at Bayreuth this year. Delays however prevented Pankratove from getting to the house in time so the first Act was sung very capably by Alexandra Petersamer from the side of the stage while the role was mimed out by the assistant director Astrid van den Akker. The circumstances were not ideal, but in practice it didn't have an adverse impact on the quality of the performance, with Pankratova at the side of the stage for Act II and III demonstrating every ounce of the power that marked her performance at Bayreuth. If anything, a mimed Kundry just gave her and the work an additional sense of otherworldliness.

Also seen at Bayreuth 2016, Ryan McKinny likewise gave another intense, agonised performance as Amfortas. There might not have been as much blood-letting as at Bayreuth, the 'Grail' here being a flow of blood onto a strip of cloth held in front of him for the followers, but the sacrificial nature of gesture counted. I was initially uncertain that Günther Groissböck would have the necessary gravitas for Gurnemanz, but he was more than capable for the role, his voice carrying even over the full force of the orchestra, and he had good stage presence.

Christopher Ventris didn't make the same kind of impression, but it's undoubtedly a challenge for singer and director to give Parsifal any real depth of character. He is a cipher, a symbol, a saviour who will lead the way through pain to redemption in compassion. There was no faulting his singing performance, which was nothing less than lyrical and beautifully articulated. Bastiaan Everink's Klingsor was similarly a cipher, but again well sung. The brilliance of the DNO chorus was truly astounding and deeply moving - reducing the lady beside me to tears at the end of Act I - and the flower maidens here were also exceptionally lyrical and beguiling.

Links: De Nationale Opera

Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades (DNO, 2016)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades

Dutch National Opera, 2016

Mariss Jansons, Stefan Herheim, Misha Didyk, Alexey Markov, Vladimir Stoyanov, Andrei Popov, Andrii Goniukov, Mikhail Makarov, Anatoli Sivko, Larissa Diadkova, Svetlana Aksenova, Anna Goryachova, Olga Savova, Maria Fiselier, Pelageya Kurennaya, Morschi Franz, Christiaan Kuyvenhoven

The Opera Platform - July 2016

Never one to take an opera libretto on face value, Stefan Herheim's production of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades for the Dutch National Opera is another of his composer portrait productions. Herheim is a director who likes to explore a composer's life and times and see how they inform the works they create, and consideration of Tchaikovsky's life, his passions and particularly his repressed homosexuality, make those great works all the more fascinating. Perhaps not so much for anyone less familiar with the composer or someone just wants to see a more straightforward account of Pushkin's tale.

Herheim's previous work at the DNO with Tchaikovsky led to the creation of a Eugene Onegin that presented a kaleidoscopic view of Russian culture and history. As much as Tchaikovsky's intimate love story might have seemed inappropriate for such a grand treatment, it did nonetheless successfully tap into deeper undercurrents of the Russian nature of the work and open up an entirely new perspective on it. The Queen of Spades, by way of contrast, draws back on the Russian nature of the work towards the more intimate and personal, making a direct link between Hermann's mad passions and those of the composer himself.

Herheim might have sidelined Wagner to each of the Act Preludes of his Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg in his previous (unimaginative) composer portrait, but it's clear that Tchaikovsky himself is going to be firmly at the centre of the DNO's The Queen of Spades. The opening scene before the overture shows a man who looks very like Tchaikovsky - but who later principally plays the part of a Yeletsky as an older man - paying a soldier who he has just given a blow-job, a soldier who turns out to be Hermann. It's an image that on the surface has nothing to do with the Queen of Spades and is clearly designed to shock, but it's not without justification for the examination of secret and illicit passions that drive much of the work.

Fired with invigoration and some measure of shame, Tchaikovsky is immediately inspired to pour his feelings into his music, making for the piano with pen and paper to hand to dash down the overture and the opening scene of the Queen of Spades. He then inserts himself into the opera as Yeletsky, who is engaged to marry Liza. A reference to Tchaikovsky's own failed attempt at marriage, Yeletsky's sincere and dignified approaches and his later protestations of love as a deep friendship are also significant. "Tchaikovsky" also flees from Liza's desire to believe in Hermann's sincerity in the bridge scene (which evidently doesn't take place on a bridge). All of this can be seen to mirror in some respects the inappropriateness and unviability of Tchaikovsky's own marriage, particularly as we know from the first scene that Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky's inclinations lean another way.

Thereafter it is impossible not to view Yeletsky as anything else but a surrogate for Tchaikovsky, but we are also invited by Herheim to see Tchaikovsky in Liza's friend Pauline and in other characters. It's as if Tchaikovsky has poured various aspects of his own personality into all the characters in the opera, which is a valid way of looking at art even if it doesn't really take the motivations of the original author Pushkin into consideration. It also tends to become complicated when you try to fit Hermann into the equation. As the person whose mad passions are central to the work, it would seem more obvious to associate Hermann with the composer, but Herheim doesn't always do the obvious.

That's because, to judge by the music and the composition of the opera, Tchaikovsky is evidently a lot more complex a personality than Hermann is in the Queen of Spades. There's a lot of indulgence on the part of Tchaikovsky in the musical arrangements of this work, but these are traits that can also be played upon to good effect, particularly in the second Act with its Pastorale and the grand fanfares to welcome the arrival of Catherine the Great. Herheim seems to poke fun at such extravagances, but at the same time he tries to make it relevant to who Tchaikovsky is, or might be, as the man behind the music. This culminates with Hermann flouncing in as 'the Queen' however, which is more camp than psychological - but then there's always a thin line there where Herheim is concerned. And perhaps Tchaikovsky too.

The mirroring of Tchaikovsky with every element of The Queen of Spades is problematic, but Herheim is not attempting a full deconstruction or psychoanalytical reading of the opera. If you want to you can consider Hermann's obsessive behaviour on a more generalised level as being symptomatic of a pathology that develops when secrets are kept hidden, you could take that from it. Rather than adding layers by including Tchaikovsky himself in the drama, it does seem more of a case of stripping the work back to its bones and exploring the emotions that underlie it.

Much like his production of Eugene Onegin, unless you are very familiar with Tchaikovsky and already know the story of the Queen of Spades, you're not going to get much out of this. Even if you do manage to pick up and piece together the elements that Herheim introduced, the value of those speculative fantasies into Tchaikovsky's motivations are scarcely any more valuable than the work (and Pushkin's work) itself. I suspect that most people would prefer to just see the story told well rather than have all these confusing and contradictory elements weighing it down. Fortunately, the production has much more to offer.

As it often is with Herheim, the production design is extravagantly beautiful. The action takes place mostly in a single drawing room that converts into a ballroom as required - although if you are less literal minded, you could see it as taking place entirely within Tchaikovsky's own mind, which obviously it does on one level. Whichever way you look at it, Philipp Fürhofer's set and costume design is just magnificent, the lighting immaculate in terms of mood as well as simply illuminating the set to look its best. Somehow, the DNO seem to have managed to persuade Mariss Jansons to work with Stefan Herheim again, despite his evident confusion (seen in the behind the scenes feature on the DVD release) over what the director was trying to achieve in their previous collaboration on Eugene Onegin. Jansons; conducting of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra through Tchaikovsky's rich score is just ravishing in its attention to the mood, to the little orchestral flourishes and to the dramatic intent of the work. This is really another wonderful collaboration.

Last but not least, the singing is outstanding. There's really no substitute for a Russian cast singing Russian opera, and the cast here are all marvellous. I've been critical of the anguished whine of Misha Didyk in the past, but he has "filled out" a little in appearance since I last saw him sing this role and that tight, high constricted tenor has also expanded into a fuller, more rounded timbre. It's by no means an easy role to sing at the best of times, but Didyk is impressive here and may even be the ideal Hermann. Because of the dual role and the acting requirements, Yeletsky/Tchaikovsky is more challenging here than the role usually is, but Vladimir Stoyanov is superb, his voice warm, lyrical and sensitive.

Larissa Diadkova is an experienced Countess, and proves her worth here again. Svetlana Aksenova's Liza is also impressive, but there's a feeling that Herheim has paid less attention to the women in the opera, or at least found Tchaikovsky's writing of them to be not as interesting as the male characters. Liza's finale however is well-staged. All the roles are most impressive, and there's much to enjoy simply in the beauty of the singing performances here. And in the choral arrangements. I'm beginning to think that the DNO build their season around works that will show their chorus off in the best possible light. The precision of the employment of the chorus is all important to the wider dynamic of this work and once again, the DNO chorus are nothing short of phenomenal.

Links: The Opera Platform, DNO