Weber - Der Freischütz (Munich, 2021)

Carl Maria von Weber - Der Freischütz

Bayerische Staaatsoper, Munich 2021

Antonello Manacorda, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Golda Schultz, Anna Prohaska, Kyle Ketelsen, Pavel Černoch, Boris Prýgl, Bálint Szabó, Tareq Nazm, Milan Siljanov, Eliza Boom, Sarah Gilford, Daria Proszek, Yajie Zhang

StaatsoperTV Live - 13 February 2021

One sure thing you can count on with an opera production by Dmitri Tcherniakov is that it's never going to be short of talking points and in some cases (Dialogues des Carmélites) downright controversy. Tcherniakov is still the only opera director I know to have had one of his works actually banned by the courts on the objection of the estate of the work's original author for subverting the true intentions of the work. You will definitely question whether he is true to the spirit of Romanticism in his setting of Weber's Der Freischütz in the executive room of the owner of a large corporation.

Furthermore, rather than opening the opera with a traditional shooting contest Tcherniakov has the competitors being urged to train a gun on and take down an unsuspecting member of the public from a window vantage point high on the office block of businessman Lord Kuno. Sure, you expect a modern director to find a new way to express the intentions of an old fashioned opera (albeit one of the most important in the history of German opera) but does this really conform to the original intentions and meaning of the original? Is Tcherniakov not again just seeking to be controversial by overturning and subverting a reactionary agenda?

For Tcherniakov, evidently the idea of a work that extols any kind of nationalist sentiment, superstition, romanticism or dealings with magic can't possibly be played straight to a contemporary audience and have the same impact as it might have had for its original audience. On the other hand there are deeper human qualities brought out in Weber's opera, and likewise Tcherniakov's intention is not to subvert the work, but use a similar exaggeration and shock factor to highlight an underlying idea. How far would someone go to impress the boss and marry into an influential family?

Well one thing you don't want to do is strike up a deal with the devil, or in the case of this production, get too friendly with and take the advice of the office weirdo, Kaspar. What he really does is encourages Max to pull the trigger that will open up his future destiny. He seems powerful and in control, but has strange ideas and hears voices and seems to be possessed, conversing with a split personality that he calls Samiel. He's also a bit of a gun freak. Too late, Max worries what he has got himself into and he has good reason to be concerned when he agrees to follow Kaspar to Wolf's Glen.

It does take a little twisting of the narrative to make this work, and where some might have more of an objection is in the director constructing his own narrative to put it into a quite different context from the original. In the gaps between scenes and in instrumental passages, Tcherniakov inserts subtitles that enter into the mind of the people involved and even creates a new narrative that you would think adds little, such as Agathe having previously been in a same-sex relationship with Ännchen, who dresses in a masculine if somewhat dandyish fashion. His take on the shock conclusion of the Hermit's forgiveness being a mere delusion and Agathe indeed being a victim of the magic bullet, is like Carmélites revisionism again, but it's enormously effective and appropriate here.

The more Romantic outlook on Der Freischütz would be the question of how far you would go for love when the path of virtue is the only road to salvation from the dark forces in the world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov's take on it as ambition and social climbing corrupting the soul can sit alongside that. You can debate whether that really gets under the skin of what the opera is all about, but there's no doubt - as is always the case I find - that he fully brings dramatic power and conviction to whatever he works on. If you didn't already know what a masterpiece Der Freischütz is, you would definitely feel it from the treatment here.

It also helps that the opera is played beautifully with Antonello Manacorda conducting the Bayerisches Staastorchester and there are some excellent singing performances. Golda Schultz in particular is impressive as Agathe and Pavel Černoch perfect as the rather unfortunate Max who falls under the spell as a wonderfully deranged Kyle Ketelsen as Kaspar/Samiel. It's also a very handsome production as most of Elena Zaytseva designs are for Dmitri Tcherniakov. In his latest mode of using elegant, tasteful wooden panel lined rooms to satirise middle- and upper-class luxury homes and offices (La Traviata, Tristan und Isolde, Pelléas et Mélisande), they could be showcase exhibits for interior design. In every respect, Tcherniakov's aim is perfect and his shot unerringly finds its true target.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, StaatsoperTV

Weber - Hunter's Bride

Carl Maria von Weber - Hunter's Bride

A Film Opera by Jens Neubert

Jens Neubert, Daniel Harding, Simon Halsey, Michael König, Juliane Banse, Michael Volle, Regula Mühlemann, René Pape, Franz Grundheber, Benno Schollum, Olaf Bär

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Considering the amount of pitfalls and difficulties inherent in making an opera film as opposed to making a recording of a live theatrical performance, it's not surprising that there are very few good films of this kind around. Jens Neubert's film opera Hunter's Bride is therefore a pleasant surprise, the director bringing to the screen a work that is not as popular and well-known as Carmen, Tosca or La Bohème, but one that is nonetheless one of the most important works in German opera - Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz. What's even better, and even more rare, is that it proves to be satisfying just as much as a film in its own right as it does as an opera.

There are several crucial elements that it is essential to get right in order for this to work on the screen. Firstly, it's essential that the work doesn't look stagey and theatrical. Despite the supernatural content of the opera's Gothic ghost story origins, Jens Neubert has a very clear focus that he successfully translates into a meaningful real-world context. Recognising that the nature and outlook of the characters in Der Freischütz is shaped and determined very much by what was happening in the world in Weber's own time, Neubert updates the opera from the just after the Thirty Years War (1648) to the time of the composition of the work itself close to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, setting it in Dresden in 1813.

Max and Kasper then are here both soldiers in the army of King Friedrich August I of Saxony just after Napoleon's defeat in Russia around the time of the break-up of his alliance with Austria and Saxony. The nature of the times lends a little more weight then to Max's desire to prove himself a master huntsman, to the importance of his being worthy of Agathe's love and to his bleak pronouncements that "Dark forces that gather round me. I am seized by despair. Does fate rule blind? Is there no God?". If the relationship to those sentiments and the war isn't clear enough, it's emphasised brilliantly in the Wolf's Gorge scene. Here, when Kasper summons Zamiel the Black Hunter to forge a "free bullet" that will ensure Max's victory in the hunting contest, the rocky gorge is filled with the bodies of dead soldiers, some of them dragged over to form a grim pentagram. The supernatural element consequently takes on a very real and sinister aspect.

The other vitally important element that will determine the success or otherwise of a filmed opera story is the performance of the cast. Jens Neubert, in his notes on the production, is very proud that the cast assembled here are world-class singers, and rightly so. With Michael König, Juliane Banse, Michael Volle, René Pape and fresh talent in Regula Mühlemann, it's an outstanding cast that is not only well-suited to this type of German Classical/Romantic-era opera, but they all have good screen presence and can act. It's a very different kind of acting skill that is required here where there is singing involved and it's not so easy to achieve either within the context of this work's supernatural elements. There are however no theatrical mannerisms here whatsoever, every performance pitched perfectly for the requirements of the camera close-up and in terms of the very real historical setting of the work.

That's not to say that the director neglects what are after all the essential Gothic qualities of the work, using special visual effects where necessary and mixing in sound effects. The use of natural sounds means that you don't always get a traditional performance where the emphasis is totally on the opera, but rather a balanced account between the music, the singing and the use of sound effects and natural sounds that would normally be considered intrusive. The director however seems to strike exactly the right balance, giving the score and singing centre stage, but not being afraid to let more natural sounds and dialogue take prominence when it is in service of the dramatic requirements of the story and the naturalistic setting of the film.  

By using the title The Hunter's Bride (in English for the international market), it might appear that the filmmakers are attempting to distance the film or mark it as distinct from the opera Der Freischütz, but this is not the case. The title is taken from Weber's intended title for the opera Die Jägersbraut, and Neubert hopes that reverting to the composer's original title will bring the emphasis of the work back to Agathe rather than shifting the focus, as it is traditionally held, from Max (Der Freischütz means The Marksman).  This is just one of the careful considerations that has gone into making sure that this is as fine and authentic an account of Weber's masterwork as the filmmakers are capable of presenting.  With this kind of cast, that's even more apparent and when combined with the setting in authentic Saxony locations, this Der Freischütz actually feels more at home on film than it does on the modern opera stage.

On Blu-ray, presenting the film at its aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the film looks marvellous in High Definition.  The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 track is also well worth mentioning, the director going to great length to create what he calls a kind of "3-D" presence that incorporates and balances the music and the natural sound effects.  A PCM stereo option is also available.  The audio is of course necessarily studio recorded and then lip-synced for filming, but this works very well, and the performance is superb.  There are numerous extra features, including a 'Making Of' that is almost an hour long, a full-length Director's Commentary, Interviews and a Synopsis.  Further information on the production and a Q&A with the director is also printed on the booklet attached to the inside cover of the digipak case.  Subtitles are provided in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Korean.  These can only be selected from the pop-up menu when the film is playing, or from the BD player's remote control.