Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans (Düsseldorf, 2023)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans

Deutsche Oper am Rhein, 2023

Vitali Alekseenok, Elisabeth Stöppler, Maria Kataeva, Sami Luttinen, Aleksandr Nesterenko, Sergej Khomov, Luiza Fatyol, Thorsten Grümbel, Evez Abdulla, Richard Šveda, Beniamin Pop, Johannes Preißinger, Žilvinas Miškinis, Mara Guseynova

OperaVision - 20th August 2023

Cinema has shown us that there can be a number of ways of presenting the Joan of Arc story. On the one side you have Carl Theodore Dryer's silent masterpiece of spiritual interiorised conflict The Passion of Joan of Arc and Bresson's austere recounting of the court records of the Trial of Joan of Arc. On the other side you have Luc Besson's actioner The Messenger with Jacques Rivette’s two-partner Jeanne la pucelle divided between 'The Battles' and 'The Prisons' seeking somewhere in-between. The question that all of the films grapple with to one extent or another, or fall to one side or the other on, is whether Joan is a warrior or saint.

When it comes to opera however it's a different story. Although this warrior/saint dichotomy presents great material for an opera, it represents different things to Verdi and Tchaikovsky in their versions of the story. Using Schiller as the source material for both, each find their own particular way into the story which also appeals to the operatic tradition, even if it perhaps takes it a little further off course. For Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, the father/daughter relationship is emphasised and Joan's ignited passions give expression to the idea of a nation and a people struggling oppressed under wartime conditions and given dramatic force through huge stirring choruses. Tchaikovsky makes use of these musical elements also but with greater focus on the spiritual drive, giving that additional emphasis through the romantic melodrama of a love story.

The force of these feelings of spiritual and emotional conflict can't be ignored in any staging and director Elisabeth Stöppler's 2023 production of The Maid of Orleans for Deutsche Oper am Rhein draws on that right from the dramatic overture. The Virgin/angel appears to Joan as a mirror image of herself in white shift and chainmail dress. At this stage it's just an awareness that she has a calling, but Joan is not yet ready and conflict rages within her (if Tchaikovsky's stirring music is anything to go by). To be fair, she's not getting a lot of support from her father who wants her to be a nice little housewife and arrange a husband for her protection, but the advancing forces on Orléans and Joan's prediction of Salisbury's fall means that this idea is resisted and the urgency of war takes precedence. It's at the end of Act 1 that the angel gives voice to her calling to take to the sword and the battlefield.

It's only really then that the urgency of Tchaikovsky music takes flight. Not that it's been anything less than intense up to now, but it's finally given revelation and purpose. Much like Tatiana's ecstatic letter to Onegin, there is a sense of fatalism in this, Joan throwing herself fully and irrevocably into the service of her inner passion and voice. If that perhaps doesn't seem quite as convincing as an expression of whatever it is that drives Joan, it's perhaps less to do with Tchaikovsky's handling of the material than the opera libretto's reliance on rather old-fashioned overly-earnest and solemn declamatory expression. There's a danger that the passion can be subsumed by nationalistic fervour but Tchaikovsky's opera does manage to give expression to the drama and what is at stake at a human level. Verdi faced the same problem with the same mixed results until he found a librettist like Boito who could give him better material to work with.

It still means that a lot of this is declamatory of feelings and conflict and little to support all this fervour in dramatic terms. There's no real action other than reports from the battlefield which are reflected and commented upon in arch terms like "he sleeps the eternal sleep". The libretto is a horror to work with and if it is to succeed on the stage, it's going to need something more than the rather unconvincing passion that is ignited in Joan's impossible love for an enemy soldier, Lionel. The director and singers here try their best to make that work with the rather bombastic expressions, but it just leads to an extraordinary amount of grasping and grappling with each other on the part of Joan and Lionel. It looks ridiculous in the middle of a war, but in terms of giving expression to those inner feelings through the singing, it's given full voice and commitment.

All of the singers are fully committed and impressive - as is the chorus (some members a little more overly enthusiastic than others) - but Maria Kataeva's Joan and Richard Šveda's Lionel in particular have to rise up to the over-the-top demands of Tchaikovsky score. We're on the heavier side of the Tchaikovsky of the 1812 Overture variety, and then some. Lionel's love for Joan truly feels life or death here, but that only leaves the director Stöppler with a challenge to bring a little more realism and humanism to the situation. There's a need to recognise at the same time that Joan of Arc is an uncommon character in a modern age, driven indeed by an internal fire, inspired by god, heaven and the angels as well as nationalistic pride. Playing it as period won't cut it, so Stöppler chooses to give it a more modern-day look and feel. And, considering it's Tchaikovsky, the current situation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine can't be ignored.

The choice of setting all four acts of the opera in the same location of a church serves to at once rein in the excessive elements of the opera, while at the same time attempting to focus it on Joan's experience being an internal transcendental spiritual experience. The same idea perhaps applies to contrasting of the modern day East European dress of the people and their experience of war with the heroic declamation of the choruses and the libretto. The reality of the situation and the reality as we know it from images from present-day Ukraine are there to see without any need to overstate the case or the parallel. King Charles VII here is more like an extravagant wealthy man with Dunois his bodyguard, both Sergej Khomov and Evez Abdulla succeeding also in giving strong performances that support both the work and the stage presentation. 

Updating the work to underplay any nationalistic expression or heroic glorification of war as being a God-given command is perhaps a necessary condition for a director, but the question is whether it doesn't end up undermining what Joan of Arc represents. Can The Maid of Orleans really work without the period Joan of Arc or does it have any more universal quality that allows us to see the same passions and sentiments in the present day? Is it still relatable? Of course it may be possible, but I didn't get too great a sense of it here. The plot too never really adds up to anything meaningful. Joan's crime in this version appears to be falling in love with an enemy and thereby losing the approval of heaven and the people. She is no longer la pucelle.

Rather than being burned at the stake for this, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein production uses the single location of the church finally being destroyed as a symbol for the fire of Joan's passion burning out and becoming an object of pity to the confused populace. Or something like that. It doesn't really make a lot of sense in the original stage directions or in the stage production here. The single location of the church also reminds me of Tcherniakov's recent take on War and Peace, but that was more towards distancing from the militaristic and nationalistic side of Prokofiev’s version of the drama, while here it seems to be harder to put any such distance from the work's romantic heroism, religious and sentimental fervour.

Under Vitali Alekseenok, the conducting and musical performance of the opera is however clearly exceptional. The passion on stage is replicated in the music which works hand-in-hand with the drama. It's a little bombastic with the huge choruses on top, but it's meant to be, Tchaikovsky giving early Verdi a run for his money in the lack of subtlety stakes. All the passion is there however in the music and there too unquestionably in the efforts of the director to get it across somehow on the stage, reaching a conclusion of a kind of ecstatic transcendence. The point of it escapes me, the worthiness of the work remains in question, but it is still marvellous to hear this work and this side of Tchaikovsky given such a full blooded performance.

External links: Deutsche Oper am Rhein, OperaVision

Photos : © Sandra Then

Blacher - Romeo und Julia (Duisberg, 2021)

Boris Blacher - Romeo und Julia

Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Duisberg - 2021

Christoph Stöcker, Manuel Schmitt, Florian Simson, Jussi Myllys, Lavinia Dames, Katarzyna Kuncio, Günes Gürle, Andrés Sulbarán, Beniamin Pop, Renée Morloc

OperaVision - 19 March 2021

Adaptations of Shakespeare to opera inevitably involve some level of cutting and reworking, to various extents and to various levels of success. Compromises would have also been made in centuries past - in Verdi, in Thomas and Berlioz - in libretti where the composers were working from less than ideal translations of Shakespeare's text. Some relatively modern adaptations have been much more successful in retaining as much of the poetry of the text and the spirit of the original as possible, notably Aribert Reimann's Lear and Brett Dean's Hamlet, surely two of the most difficult Shakespeare works to imagine being adapted to music.

The narrator at the prologue of Boris Blacher's 1943 chamber opera Romeo und Julia - a German cabaret chansonnier dressed in drag as Queen Elizabeth - suggests that this is not going to be the most faithful of Shakespeare adaptations, and although he promises a two hour telling, the 70 minute running time doesn't really appear to be capable of providing anything more than just a surface retelling of a doomed romance. That's still a lot of Shakespeare to compress down without losing the poetry and essence of the work, so evidently the music is going to have to do some heavy lifting here.

And to some extent, Blacher's opera does so much more successfully than you might imagine - impressively even - particularly since the reduced orchestration consists solely of string quintet, piano, flute, bassoon and trumpet. Secondary characters, including Friar Laurence, are combined in a tightly harmonised eight person chorale singing in oratorio-like fashion. Musically it's surprisingly varied in tone and arrangement, with a Kurt Weill-style cabaret narrator interludes and chamber orchestration that manages to capture the mood of each scene, from the dramatic fight, to the celebratory party, to the famous romantic encounters and the tragic finale.

The abridged and musically reduced version might have been something of a necessity for an opera composed during the war, but Romeo und Julia nonetheless benefits from this kind of compression and condensing, bringing a tighter focus to the love story. If it is less attentive to the detail of the wars between the Capulet and Montague, the real world outside would have provided plenty of context for that. Which in turn makes this an opera not only eminently suitable for staging in the current lockdown conditions, but one where we can understand the difficulties of people trying to carry on relationships under adverse conditions where circumstances and vast forces beyond their control strive to keep them apart.

Inevitably the drama of Romeo und Julia seems a little rushed and overheated if you are familiar with the play, but in truth, even the original play is overheated in how quickly passions and bloods are ignited in both love and in violence, and in how deeply these experiences cut. It's about young people, impetuous, quick to react, dismissive or even contemptuous of the consequences of not following the rules of their elders. The concision of Blacher's opera works then to the benefit of the headlong rush to abandon oneself to the passions of the moment, and the music does it's best to keep up with them.

Even if you're not all that familiar with the play, the tighter focus, the choice of scenes, the music, the handling of the characters and the use of a chorus makes it relatively easy to follow in this opera version. It helps that the poetry of the original is retained in as much as it can be in German translation, the English subtitles in this recorded version for OperaVision even choosing to adhere directly or much more closely to Shakespeare's original text. And when it has such famous lines, well, why wouldn't you?

Manuel Schmitt's directing for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein production is fairly simple but effective in the way that it contributes to highlight Blacher's take on the work and matches its austere chamber arrangements. The costumes are contemporary but there's nothing here trying too hard to be radical, just enough to be suitable and give a sense of the roles of each character. There is little need for over-decoration of the set either, the main action taking place on simple bare stage surrounded by neon-pipe lighting. Romeo and Juliet and the youths occupy centre stage, while fathers, mothers and other authority figures taken up by the chorus remain above on a surrounding platform.

There is however another level hinted at here, the stage rising to reveal a backstage underworld of sorts. Without getting too meta, it's partly an allusion to a narrative level, since the work has the chansonnier walk-on interludes, but it also hints at those external factors that extend the story outwards. All the world is indeed a stage, and each has their role to play. The distinctions and boundaries between our roles as actors, observers or facilitators is not always clear and that's also perhaps hinted at in the work or the production - particularly with many roles being subsumed into a chorus - or something at least that occurred to me while watching this.

Likewise, it's telling that there is a role for musicians on stage here and for "music with her silver sound", a minor scene in Romeo and Juliet (not one I even remembered, but I checked and it is there), but one which Blacher feels duty bound to include in his opera. The music Blacher writes for the work is indeed lyrical and dramatic for all its minimalism, conducted here by Christoph Stöcker to full heightened effect. The writing for the voices is lyrical too and beautifully sung here by Jussi Myllys and Lavinia Dames as Romeo and Juliet, the chorus also contributing to the overall success of this worthy and fascinating work that Deutsche Oper am Rhein have revived for us.

Links: OperaVision

Handel - Xerxes (Duisburg, 2019)

George Frideric Handel - Xerxes

Deutsche Oper am Rhein, 2019

Konrad Junghänel, Stefan Herheim, Valer Sabadus, Terry Wey, Katarina Bradic, Torben Jürgens, Heidi Elisabeth Meier, Anke Krabbe, Hagen Matzeit

OperaVision - January 2019

What is impressive about many of Stefan Herheim's productions is his ability to get deep underneath the driving forces of the works in question, whether it's by transporting the work into a modern context and completely deconstructing it (La Bohème, Rusalka), setting it in the wider context of the time and history surrounding its creation (Eugene Onegin), or even using the creator of the work and its creation to illuminate and provide another way of looking at the works (Parsifal, The Queen of Spades). Ironic distancing has to be maintained however with a respect for the fundamental concerns of the work and sometimes you get the impression on rare occasions that either Herheim's approach is completely ironical or he just doesn't have anything particularly deep or meaningful to say about the work.

Keeping opera seria entertaining and relevant to a modern audience while respecting the musical conventions and intentions of the work is a challenge for any director, and Handel's Xerxes/Serse is not the most dramatic or involving of treatments on a subject that has been covered many times in baroque opera. Sometimes however all you need is a single idea or context to set the work within, and Herheim's idea is a simple one that comes from a reversal of the work's English title; Xerxes becomes Sex Rex, the first century Persian king is actually something of a sex maniac.

That's actually an original and refreshing way of looking at the traditional role of the powerful ruler's involvement in a situation that is common in opera seria. Disrupting the romantic lives of everyone around him when he decides to choose a partner for himself, often it's seen in terms of a ruler being self-absorbed and oblivious to the concerns of others, asserting his will in an abuse of power. Nowadays that kind of behaviour from someone in a position of power and authority is seen differently as a sex pest or sexual predator, but Herheim doesn't attempt to put it in a modern context in the style for example of the 2017 Karlsruhe Semele.

Herheim in fact doesn't appear to choose to delve any more deeply than the simple reversal of the title however in this production of Xerxes, and rather than modernise the production or seek to put it in the context of a framework, he seems instead to just let it play out looking like a period production from 1738 when the opera was composed. Or is it a parody of an old opera seria production? This is where Herheim likes to blur the lines, but he gives little away to indicate any kind of irony or detachment, other than perhaps the fact that the behaviours of the characters are more recognisably human than the rather stiff formalism of roles and characters that you might expect from this.

But what might you reasonably expect from Xerxes? When the opera was first performed it wasn't terribly popular because it broke several of the strict rules of opera seria. For a start, Handel reduced the formality of da capo repetition in arias, reducing most of them down to one-part arias, which doesn't give the singers quite as much leeway for ornamentation. He also introduced an element of buffo comedy into the work, and mixing buffo and seria is a serious misdemeanour that in earlier times in France was known to result in a war, or at least a war of words in the Querelle des Bouffons.

Handel, I imagine, wasn't trying to start any wars, but simply reacting to the practical demands of the storyline, which to be frank was surely a rather tired situation even by Handel's time, and introduce a little more musical colour to the palette. Which he undoubtedly does, but perhaps not to the extent that the work can be staged 'straight' to a modern audience. I've no doubt that Stefan Herheim has thoroughly researched this, but as far as I can see, all he has managed to come up with as a way of tapping into the spirit of the work and presenting it to a modern audience is to exaggerate the other elements or bring them up to the level of Xerxes the Sex Rex.

Elviro as the comic fool for example, is played up to an almost slapstick level where he can hardly move for stumbling or bumping into people. Herheim even has him arguing with the prompter and the conductor in the pit, and Xerxes in annoyance breaks a musician's flute. Atalanta is extra-flirtatious and scheming, Romilda extra-prim and virtuous resulting in Atalanta's plots to remove her rival by attacking her in one scene with a knife, a snake, a gun, a cannon which puts a hole in the back of the scenery through to the backstage, then uses a crossbow and eventually succeeds only in bringing down a doll of Eros. With some dancing sheep thrown in, Herheim himself describes it all as a “baroque Muppet Show”.

There's no doubt that this enlivens the work to some degree, and it's quite clever in a nudge and a wink kind of way that recognises we are all actors playing roles on the stage of life, but there's not a lot more to it than that. There perhaps doesn't need to be for this opera, particularly when the production values are as high as we've come to expect from a Herheim production. If it's not a parody of an 18th century opera, it has all of the old-world spectacle of the stage design, props and costumes. It looks good, it sounds good, it's a bit of fun, and that ought to be enough, but it doesn't really do much to lessen the predictability and conventionality of the drama from feeling very tiring over the three hours it takes to get to a conclusion.

Perhaps that's down to the work itself which, hearing it for the first time, doesn't seem to rate among the most memorable of Handel's works. There's moments to enjoy of course in the musical performance under the direction of Konrad Junghänel who keeps it flowing along quite well. With recitative in German and the principal arias in Italian, the singing performances are good, counter-tenor Valer Sabadus in the castrato role of Xerxes tries hard to inject life and humour into the proceedings, Katarina Bradic as his cross-dressing jilted fiancée Amastre brings a lively verve to her performance. There's much to enjoy also in the complications between Atalanta, Romilda, Arsamene and Elviro, but the singing doesn't always have the necessary fullness and, despite all the efforts and prettiness of the production, it does come across as a disappointingly limp affair.

Links: Deutsche Oper am Rhein, OperaVision, YouTube