Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten (Vienna, 2019)

Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Wiener Staatsoper, 2019

Christian Thielemann, Vincent Huguet, Camilla Nylund, Nina Stemme, Evelyn Herlitzius, Wolfgang Koch, Stephen Gould, Wolfgang Bankl

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 25 May 2019

It's not difficult to see what is attractive about the Vienna State Opera's production of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Of course any performance of Richard Strauss's glorious epic masterwork is alone reason enough, but in this case there is also the chance to hear it conducted by Christian Thielemann who you can be sure will provide at the very least a precise, detailed and soaring interpretation of the work. The opportunity of to see Evelyn Herlitzius, Nina Stemme and Camilla Nylund working together, three of the leading ladies of Strauss (and Wagner) of the moment, is also to die for. That's not to mention Stephen Gould and Wolfgang Koch in the other significant roles. Evidently you can expect this to deliver the musical goods, but unfortunately it turns out that the only thing missing in the Vienna production is any shadow of an idea from the director Vincent Huguet how to to make the most of what is available here.

What is most disappointing is that Huguet doesn't find any way to approach a work that is rich in symbolism and ideas, much less find any way to illuminate its mysteries. The subject of a flawed Utopia that runs through the fantastical German opera of this period in the lush seductive creations of Korngold, Schreker and many other post-Wagnerians, reveals a fin de siècle fascination with history and humanity reaching a turning point. There is a magical quality in such works that shows that humanity has the capacity to aspire to be better and change the world, but perhaps with a recognition that inherent weaknesses in human nature will result in a flawed creation. That would at least be the case in later works that may also have had an eye on the direction that Germany was heading in under a regime that would ban their works as 'degenerate', but in 1919, Strauss and Hoffmansthal - taking a lead from Mozart (it's hard to do better) - still had a cautiously optimistic outlook.

There's huge potential for growth exploring this idea on any number of levels within Die Frau ohne Schatten. In the worlds of the Kaiser and Kaiserin and that of the dyer Barak and his wife there are all kinds of contrasts between the high and the low, between the spiritual needs and the physical needs of humanity that could be brought out, but this production doesn't even really succeed in differentiating between these contrasting planes of reality. There is an argument to be made that they are just different facets of the same thing. On one side there's the dyer's wife and her dreams of a more comfortable life fantasising about a love that is perhaps no deeper than physical lust, but her marriage to Barak is lacking more than that. On the other side, in the elevated symbolism of Deer and Falcons, the Emperor and Empress have a deeper spiritual and emotional attachment, but their relationship lacks substance; the Empress has no shadow.

More than just reductively being about fertility, the woman without shadow is woman without an essential part of herself, a woman of no substance. The Empress is admired and adored by the Emperor for a being a magical creature, not a being of substance. The nurse knows where people have shadows and it's down in the misery of the human world. The poor dyer and his wife in fact have rather too much 'substance' and it prevents them from being able to truly love each other on a higher spiritual level. Perhaps that comes through more clearly when it's presented, as it is here, shorn of most of its fantasy elements and symbolism, letting the power of Strauss's music speak for itself. Certainly by the end of Act 1 the chorus that meaning comes across that it's the love of a married couple that can be the bridge that spans the chasm "which the dead cross to return to life". What gives substance is the understanding and acceptance that we are all part of something bigger, physical and spiritual, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all family, all connected to the past and to a better future.

Perhaps striving more for mood and downplaying any distracting attempt at extravagant fairy-tale imagery, there's consequently a darkness to Vincent Huguet's production as a whole, a shadow hanging over it if you like, the characters each struggling to not be enveloped by it, a dark curtain falling at the end of each scene. Projections are used for effects of rocky outcrops and grottoes, and Act III is set in an impressive causeway of stone columns, all of which brings a real-world earthiness. It feels a little generic in that respect, very much like a leftover set from Elektra or Pelléas et Mélisande, but you can get a sense of the deep underlying forces at work striving to connect it all together. Too much of the opera remains obscure however and it's meaning impenetrable. There's nothing wrong with Die Frau ohne Schatten retaining some or much of its enigma - you can say much the same about the model it aspires to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte - but the opera's huge message of the unifying force of love and brotherhood should be made more explicit.

On a musical level the Wiener Staatsoper production certainly delivers on any prior expectations you might have here. Christian Thielemann's conducting reminds us that beneath the lushness of the extravagant large-scale orchestration lies the same Strauss capable of unleashing the thundering dissonant chords effectively employed in Salome, combining it with the expressive colouration of his tone poems and the elegance and depth of sentiment that is there in the deceptive lightness of Der Rosenkavalier. The performance of the Vienna State Opera orchestra is just amazing, and Thielemann puts them to work harnessing those immense resources to expose all the beauty, detail of the "higher powers" that are expressed in the music.

You really need an all-star cast of tested singers to even think about taking on Die Frau ohne Schatten and they all measure up here. If there are any minor reservations about performance and interpretation, they are likely to be in relation to Evelyn Herlitzius, who has a tendency to head towards shrill and shriek. This is compensated for, as it often is, by her usual committed and charismatic performance. That's in spite of a seeming lack of acting direction that often leaves the performers to their own devices in reactions and interaction, occasionally leaving them standing not knowing what to do. With much of the heavy work being done in the music and in the vocal performances, these are by no means critical issues, but you sense a wasted opportunity.

Regardless of individual performances there's just a lovely contrast between the sound of the voices and expression of Nina Stemme, Camilla Nylund and Evelyn Herlitzius, each distinctive, each well matched to their respective roles, each impressive in meeting the demands of what are extraordinarily challenging roles. Stephen Gould looks like he is starting to feel the strain but he still can carry punishing roles like the Kaiser impressively and Wolfgang Koch is practically synonymous with Barak the dyer in recent years. When it comes to his Act III duet with Stemme and the subsequent healing forces that resolve the opera, it's glorious and emotional, touching on all those gorgeous complex Straussian (and Hoffmansthal-ian) sentiments of love and regret, nostalgia for the past and cautious hopeful optimism for the future.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home

Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten (Munich 2013 - Webcast)

Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2013

Kirill Petrenko, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Johan Botha, Adrianne Pieczonka, Deborah Polaski, Elena Pankratova, Wolfgang Koch, Sebastian Holecek, Eri Nakamura, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Dean Power, Okka von der Damerau, Tim Kuypers, Christian Rieger, Matthew Peña, Laura Tatulescu, Tara Erraught, Heike Grötzinger, Andrea Borghini, RafaI Pawnuk, Leonard Bernad, Iulia Maria Dan

Staatsoper.TV Live Internet Streaming - 1st December 2013

Die Frau ohne Schatten is notoriously one of the most difficult works to stage, the fairytale setting having some directions that are near-impossible to depict conventionally, including frying fish that lament with the Voices of Unborn Children, earthquakes and magically appearing fountains. Even the most basic idea behind the opera - a woman who doesn't cast a shadow - is not an easy thing to achieve credibly on a lighted stage. Inevitably then, directors are required to be somewhat creative in their approach, without losing the necessary otherworldly quality of the work.

Directing Richard Strauss's epic work for the Bavarian State Opera, Krzysztof Warlikowski is not a director short of ideas, one who can always be relied upon for creative and unconventional approaches to opera staging, particularly for a work as rich in imagery and ideas as Die Frau ohne Schatten. Considering that much of the work's fairytale symbolism is based on Strauss and Hofmannsthal's interest in the Freudian theories and psychoanalysis it's not uncommon for productions to use a similar method to explore the underlying meanings and subtexts to be found in the opera, so it's not surprising that a director like Warlikowski finds the work to be fertile ground for a number of ideas.

The Munich production of Die Frau ohne Schatten then, unsurprisingly, doesn't take place in a fairytale world, but rather in a more modern setting that relates to the mindset of the Empress, daughter of Keikobad, the Woman without a Shadow. When they descend from the Spirit Realm down to Earth then in search of a shadow, the Nurse and the Empress seem to take an elevator from the upper level of a luxury apartment building into the basement where Barak the dyer and his wife do the laundry. It's not a literal descent however - it's certainly not enough to make the fairytale storyline "real" - but rather there's a suggestion that the Nurse is using her powers (hypnosis? psychoanalysis?) to force the Empress (who is often seen lying on a couch) to confront her deepest fears and get in touch with her inner self.

This is certainly a valid interpretation of Die Frau ohne Schatten, if somewhat unimaginative for a director like Krzysztof Warlikowski. We already know the Empress has an inner life - she's a gazelle in the form of a woman - while her lack of a shadow moreover is clearly a description of her inability to bear children. Here, as elsewhere, Warlikowski's production emphasises greatly the deep female desires and anxieties related to sexuality, childbearing and motherhood that can be read from the work. The Dyer's wife in particular, granted fulfilment of a life of luxury by the Nurse in exchange for her shadow (and thus liberated from the ability to conceive), can be seen indulging her wildest fantasies with semi-naked handsome young men, some of them wearing falcon heads.

The men in Die Frau ohne Schatten are depicted as being well-meaning but essentially one-note - the childless Emperor caught up in his obsession with his red falcon and with hunting (which you could interpret as a desire for 'death'), Barak with rather more basic urges, frustrated by the inattention of his wife and his banishment from the marital bed once the Wife has agreed to the Nurse's terms in trade for her shadow. The male perspective is an under-explored avenue of the work, but it's not one that interests Warlikowski. The director certainly finds imaginative imagery that rivals Hofmannsthal's to depict the situation of men who are unable to find fulfilment in their female partners, but the men are still mostly sidelined here.

Perhaps more surprisingly for this director is the fall-back onto one of the old familiar tricks that are commonly used when a dramatic situation appears too exaggerated to depict literally. You can either create the necessary distance by making it a play-within-a-play, or you can set it as the deranged imaginings of a character in an asylum for the insane. As becomes clear in the later part of the production - and in keeping with the psychologist's couch origin - Warlikowski goes for the asylum option, with the Nurse eventually being the one put into a straight-jacket. It's a disappointing reading of the work, particularly when we have recently had such a radical interpretation of this opera from Christoph Loy at Salzburg, seeing the 1919 work as a lament for Unborn Children of the Dead during the Great War, with those feelings reawakened through its setting during the post-WWII Karl Bohm recording sessions of the opera.

If Warlikowski's interpretation doesn't engage the mind and the imagination quite as much, the Munich production nonetheless is at least a feast for the eyes and the ears, and it's not without some bizarrely surreal imagery and a few characteristically clever touches. The sets are extravagant in terms of their being so much going on. There's a gazelle on the stage which 'gives birth' to a young child in red, all of which opens out other impressions of the nature of the Empress. Lights, colour and projections also define the divisions between reality and fantasy, with plenty of objects that serve literal and symbolic purposes - a bed, an elevator, a fish tank - and supernumeraries wearing animal and falcon heads. The director's response to the challenges of the stage directions is occasionally inspired, such as when an asylum nurse places a glass of water in front of the Empress rather than a Fountain of Life appearing.

Much of imagery can be nearly unfathomable other than for setting mood and tone (a five minute prelude of scenes from Alain Resnais' 'Last Year at Marienbad' precedes the opening and the ending has projections of Batman, Marilyn Monroe and Gandhi), but the use of the stage is nonetheless magnificent. Die Frau ohne Schatten is an extravagant work - over-indulgent perhaps, confused and confusing even - but it demands this kind of imaginative and impressive response. There is consequently never a dull moment here, always something of interest going on somewhere on the stage, in the lighting, in the projections, in the colour, in the props, in the movements. As the debut for the new house music director, Kirill Petrenko, this was also a case of rising to the occasion. There's little shimmering delicacy for Strauss's lush arrangements here, rather an emphasis on the dark undercurrents that are powerfully drawn out from the immense orchestration.

Most importantly however, the characters are well-defined in terms of personalities and the performers are well-coached by the director to respond to the situations and to each other. Warlikowski gives them context to bring these elusive characters to life, but the singers still have a considerable amount to bring to the production as well. Die Frau ohne Schatten has a (deserved) reputation for being difficult to cast five strong singers in the exceptionally demanding main roles, and the cast assembled here are terrific. As a complete performance and in how she is such a vital component of this particular production as the arch-manipulator, Deborah Polaski's Nurse injects real personality here and sings marvellously as well. Adrianne Pieczonka's Empress is luxuriously voiced and Elena Pankratova is impressive as the Dyer's Wife. Wolfgang Koch doesn't have a big voice, but again is very capable in this role. Johan Botha is also in fine voice as the Emperor. It's perhaps not as rich in timbre as it once was and he doesn't make as much of an impact here when strong acting is required, but Botha can still sing this role with ease.

Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg 2011

Christian Thielemann, Christof Loy, Stephen Gould, Anne Schwanewilms, Michaela Schuster, Evelyn Herlitzius, Wolfgang Koch, Marius Brück, Steven Humes, Andreas Conrad, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Rachel Frenkel, Peter Sonn, Maria Radner 

Opus Arte

Die Frau ohne Schatten has long been considered one of the Strauss’s most challenging works to perform, and it’s such a magnum opus that one attends a performance of the opera – rare though they are – with a sense of high expectation. If you’re going to undertake such a work, it’s reasonable to expect that the production is going to pull out all the stops. The fairytale nature of Die Frau ohne Schatten however presents some challenges for the more experimental stage director used to modernising works, so it was always going to be interesting to see how Christof Loy was going to rework the story for the 2011 Salzburg Festival. Even by Loy’s standards for courting controversy through a very personal conceptual approach, the Salzburg Festpiele Die Frau ohne Schatten must be one of the strangest conceits ever applied to any opera production.

Not unsurprisingly, Loy dispenses with the fairytale setting entirely, ignores the stage directions, would appear to pay scant heed to the libretto, and instead sets Die Frau ohne Schatten in a recording studio in Vienna in 1955. Now, the idea of making the performance the performance, so to speak, isn’t anything new by the standards of Loy’s minimalist semi-staged productions, but this really takes the idea to another level altogether. The set is built to resemble, in meticulous reconstructed detail, the legendary Viennese concert hall, the Sofiensaal (destroyed in a fire in 2001), where, dressed in frumpy 1950s clothing, the singers here appear to recreate the studio sessions for the first recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten by Karl Böhm in 1955.

The theory behind the concept is considered in the booklet enclosed with this DVD/BD release, but I’m not sure how helpful that will be to anyone. I can’t make head or tail of it myself, and I’m used to and quite enjoy trying to figure out the often bizarre theories applied to modern opera productions. Are we supposed to be interested in the historical performers of the work and relate the tensions of the drama in the opera in some way to their lives? Or is it supposed to operate on a deeper philosophical level on the nature of art and performance? Whatever the rationale, there seems to be little justification for having singers stand at a podium and sing out to the audience in a work as rich and wonderful as Die Frau ohne Schatten.

First of all, it’s a little bit misleading to say that the singers just stand at a pedestal with the score in front of them and sing out to the audience. Replicating the activity in a recording studio, the performers stop to have coffee from a flask, drink a glass of water, take a smoke break, take off their coats, and walk in and out of the concert hall when not required on the sound stage that is marked by a red light during recording. Technicians meanwhile run around and adjust settings or place the singers into position, and there are numerous other extras and choruses filling the stage. Still, there’s not much there to suggest that the production connects in any way with the opera itself. Over the course of the performance however, while the action never moves outside the Sofiensaal concert hall, the story seems to take over the characters, possessing them, drawing them into the powerful emotions expressed in the drama and the score, and the distinction between the singers and what they are singing becomes blurred. It’s bizarrely fascinating to watch, but clearly not everyone will think so.

There does seem to be some parallel drawn, perhaps, between the post-WWII setting of the recording of the opera and the time of its composition during the First World War. It seems no less extravagant to be recording such a work at a time of great privations (the concert hall is clearly unheated and there are no luxuries in the conditions or the sandwiches laid on for them), but like Strauss and Hofmannstahl’s intentions (whether you judge them misguided or not, since the work was not well initially received), Die Frau ohne Schatten is an attempt to reconnect through art with the finer qualities of human nature in response to the horror going on in the world at that time. It’s perhaps – and this is entirely my response to the work – the same recognition on the part of the performers in the post-war years of that deeper element in the work that hits the characters so hard, no more so than the confused Empress who is longing to regain a sense of humanity through the acquisition of a shadow, and the horror of the price that has to be paid for it.

Whatever the reason may be, Loy’s production does in some way achieve a strong connection with the intent of a work whose purpose and meaning has always been elusive and enigmatic. In the way that it mixes musical references, asks self-reflexive questions on the nature of art and dramatic representation and has definite philosophical and humanitarian leanings, I can’t help but think that the composer and librettist of such works as Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Rosenkavalier and even Capriccio (based on an idea by Hofmannstahl) would approve of such an approach. The model for Die Frau ohne Schatten according to the composer and librettist was Mozart’s The Magic Flute, but to all intents and purposes the approach is Wagnerian and it’s specifically Parsifal-like in its spiritual dimension and its theme of sacrifice and redemption. “There are higher powers at work” .

Those higher powers are there of course in the music, which, as Strauss intended, takes over where words cannot adequately express. It’s Wagner rather than Mozart that also influences Christian Thielemann’s conducting of the orchestra and the singing performances. Scored for an orchestra of one hundred and seven, Thielemann controls every element of the huge sound that is created by the astonishing performance of the Wiener Philharmoniker, sweeping and powerful at times, and yet full of incredibly intricate, virtuoso touches and more sensitivity and heartfelt emotion than you would expect to find in the strange fairytale nature of the work. It is utterly, utterly beautiful – as fine an account of Strauss’s most extravagant work as you could imagine. And as complete an account as well, the entire three and a half hours of the work presented here in full and uncut. Act III benefits most from this fuller presentation, particularly in relation to the roles of the Nurse and the Empress, restoring a balance to the work as a whole.

This is not an opera for discussing the individual qualities of the singing voices. You don’t put on this particular opera unless you have singers capable of meeting its extreme demands, and you certainly don’t put them in front of Thielemann when he is doing Strauss. You could question the casting and singing that is also more Wagnerian than Mozart, but that seems to me to be appropriate for this work, regardless of what Strauss may have claimed were his intentions for it. All of singers are exceptionally good. Anne Schwanewilms and Michaela Schuster, as mentioned above, bring new depths out of the fuller roles of the Empress and the Nurse, but I was particularly impressed by Evelyn Herlitzius as Barak’s wife, who sings the role with extraordinary conviction and power. Along with Wolfgang Koch’s Barak the Dyer, the two of them manage to create that all-important sense of humanity in their relationship that lies at the heart of the piece. That’s evident also in Stephen Gould’s magnificent Emperor, the emotional depth of his 'Falke du Wiedergefundener' almost unbearable, forging a connection directly with the music score in a way that makes the intent comprehensible even if the fairytale context of the work does not.

As does Christof Loy’s staging, even if likewise it isn’t immediately apparent how or why. Either it works for the audience or it doesn’t (and clearly it doesn’t for a large proportion of the audience in Salzburg judging by the booing that greeted the production team at the curtain call here), but personally, I found it extraordinarily powerful and moving. It certainly won’t work for everyone and may prove to be a distraction while you try and figure out what point he is trying to make with its 1950s concert staging, but whether you think it works or not, it operates hand-in-hand with Strauss, Hofmannstahl, Thielemann, the Wiener Philharmoniker and with the singers to create the right kind of environment that draws the majesty and mystery out of the work and the music-drama experience. It’s all there and if you don’t feel the full force of it in this production, then you must indeed have been turned to stone.

While this must have been extraordinary to experience live in the Salzburger Grosses Festspielhaus back in July 2011, it’s to the credit of the recording that it’s also an incredible experience in High Definition on the Blu-ray from Opus Arte. The image quality is impressive, but not clinical, with a slight softness that suits it. With a full four hours compressed onto the BD50 disc, there are a few instances of minor wavering and fluctuation in lines, but only if you are looking for them. The audio tracks are PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and both are resolutely clear and powerful, with a gorgeous tone to the orchestration. There’s a certain amount of reverb evident in the acoustics of the stage, which seems to be more pronounced in the stereo option, the surround mix spreading the sound a little better, I found. Extras on the disc include a Cast Gallery and Thielemann in Rehearsal, an interesting 25 minute look at the preparations for the production with interviews. Subtitles are in English, French, German and Spanish.