Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Rome, 2019)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 2019

Alejo Pérez, Emma Dante, Leigh Melrose, Ewa Vestin, Anna Victorova, Mairam Sokolova, Sergey Radchenko, Andrii Ganchuk, Maxim Paster, Goran Jurić, Domingo Pellicola, Petr Sokolov

Naxos - Blu-ray

Composed in 1927 but considered far too extreme to stage, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel was never fully performed or staged during the composer's lifetime. It is however an extraordinary opera and is indeed a work of extremes, one that pushes at musical, dramatic and psychological boundaries. There are consequently many different ways of approaching it, but in almost every case you have to wholeheartedly embrace its extremes and its madness. Emma Dante's 2019 production for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma succeeds in just about every level, perhaps even getting close to illuminating what this strange and almost forgotten masterpiece is all about.

What it is, is what it is about. It's indeed about extremes, about the human experience pushing and being pushed to extremes, to the extent that it borders and almost spills over into madness; and what is madness but humanity pushed to extremes? The troubled Renata is not just schizophrenic who searches to recapture a hallucinatory vision of an angel that visited her as a child, but she is chasing what the angel represents; a growing to sexual awareness as well as the longing for fullness of being. She was able to indulge this burning desire in her marriage to Count Heinrich, but since he has abandoned her, her thirst for and taste of forbidden pleasures has not been sated.

The same can be said about Ruprecht, the travelling knight who hears her torments while staying next door to her in an inn. He doesn't see her the way others do as a wanton madwoman, but having seen much of the world and having visited the new world of America, he finds her state of mind compelling in its willingness to embrace something bigger than itself, her uniqueness and her determination to achieve it, and is consequently filled with lust for her. For this, he is even willing to indulge her journey to Cologne, visiting mages, scientists and philosophers in her quest to rediscover Heinrich - or what he represents for her in her mind - and he too wholeheartedly follows her down some strange paths.

The scientists, religious guides, occultists and the esoteric forbidden texts that they seek out and pore over are just another representation of the human desire to extend and expand knowledge of the capacity of mankind, to experience life fully on all fronts; love and tenderness, hatred and death, body and soul. It's evidently an endless quest, torn between angels on one side and demons on the other. That essentially is what Prokofiev pours into his incredible score for The Fiery Angel and it's what director Emma Dante strives to do justice to in visual and dramatic terms. If you achieve that, you have something remarkable; total opera. That is certainly the impression you get from this production.

It's a busy enough drama, but there is so much going on in the musical expression of the drama and its undercurrents, that it's simply not enough to just tell the story. The director finds some quite brilliant ways to highlight the ideas, the less tangible and the unknowable side of Renata and Ruprecht's restless quest, looking for answers, trying to solve the mysteries that lie on the boundaries of human experience and sexual desire. Setting it mainly in a crypt and in a book filled library to highlight the themes, Dante also employs extras and dancers who whirl and spin around the singers, dancing and moving to the music, a legion of fleeting thoughts and impressions that go through Renata's disturbed mindset. Even her related story of Heinrich and her encounter with Madiel finds visual representation on the stage, as they are very much present in the music.

If you can illustrate what the music is expressing the way Dante does - and it really is vivid, colourful, endlessly creative music - and you have great singers to draw the human side out of it, you have got an opera here that itself pushes the limits of human and artistic expression. The musical performance under the direction of Alejo Pérez is a marvel, perhaps all the more impressive for it being illustrated so well on the stage, but the sound recording on this video release is also just breathtaking, capturing the wild dynamic of the ever changing and evolving sound world, giving a wide soundstage to the instruments in the Blu-ray's High Resolution audio mixes. It sounds as incredible as it looks.

There's only one way to sing The Fiery Angel and that's with total commitment and controlled outpouring of passion. The only other work that I think comes close to this - or that this comes close to perhaps - is Wozzeck. Both take on an ambitious musical exploration of depths of human soul, the challenges of life, subject to misfortune outside of one's control to influence. It's up there with Elektra too in that respect. Like those works - early twentieth century masterpieces all - Prokofiev's piece is incredibly demanding but when done well impressive on a scale that few other operas can match.

The cast here are all excellent, all of which contributes to the overall impact of the opera and the production. Renata can't be anything but remarkable but that shouldn't be taken for granted, and Ewa Vestin has terrific presence, giving an excellent dramatic and singing performance that is controlled in its outpouring of emotions. She is matched by a fine Ruprecht in Leigh Melrose, but there are also excellent performances from Maxim Paster as Mephistopheles and Goran Jurić as the Inquisitor, the two anchoring opposing forces of the opera's extremes. Absolutely faultless in performance, impressive in direction, this is nothing but glorious opera.

The Naxos Blu-ray give this the kind of presentation you could hope for. The A/V quality is superb, the image clear, colourful and detailed, but it's the Hi-Res audio mixes that lift this to another level. The force and detail of the orchestral performance has tremendous presence around the singing voices, spread across the spectrum in both stereo and surround mixes. The enclosed booklet contains an essential detailed synopsis and an interesting interview with Emma Dante. The Blu-ray is all-region (A/B/C), BD50, with subtitles in English, German, Italian, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Strauss - Feuersnot (Palermo, 2014 - Blu-ray)

Richard Strauss - Feuersnot

Teatro Massimo, Palermo - 2014

Gabriele Ferro, Emma Dante, Nicola Beller Carbone, Dietrich Henschel, Alex Wawiloff, Rubén Amoretti, Christine Knorren, Chiara Fracasso, Anna Maria Sarra, Michail Ryssov, Nicolò Ceriani, Paolo Battaglia

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

History hasn't been kind to Richard Strauss's first two operas Guntram (1894) and Feuersnot (1901), both of them better known now by reputation than through actual performance. It's common knowledge then that the influence of Wagner was still very present in Strauss's early operas, slavishly so in Guntram, self-consciously in Feuersnot. That would change definitively in the operas that follow, Strauss finding his own voice in Salome, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, but that doesn't mean that there aren't traces and roots of classic Strauss in those earlier works. Feuersnot, in particular, demonstrates much of what would become great in later Strauss operas.

Not that you would have had much of an opportunity to reevaluate those early Strauss operas, with any performances of Guntram and Feuersnot, even in the year of the Richard Strauss centenary, tending to be concert performances. One welcome exception, thankfully recorded and preserved for release on Blu-ray, is the rare staging of Feuersnot at the Teatro Massino in Palermo in 2014. Directed by Emma Dante and conducted by Gabriele Ferro, it's a thoughtful and entertaining production that plays to the strengths of the work, at the same time as it manages to overcome many of the problems that might prevent it being staged more often.

The main problem with staging Feuersnot, I imagine, is that it's hard to know quite how to pitch Strauss's undoubtedly self-indulgent attempt at parody in the work, and actually make it entertaining. It's difficult to judge and pitch the work as a Strauss opera when it is so self-consciously Wagnerian. The danger is that you will think that Strauss is being far too clever for his own good, a bit of a show-off, immodestly writing a work on the model of Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg in which he sets himself up as the "true heir" to Wagner, as well as regarding himself as a bit of a stud. Emma Dante finds a very good way of bringing these ambitions a little more down to earth in her production for the Teatro Massimo.

Feuersnot is a played out as a medieval legend based in a village near Munich. There an apprentice sorcerer, Sir Kunrad, based on Strauss himself, takes his revenge on the people who fail to recognise his talent and his rightful position as the successor to the great Master magician Reichhart Wag'ner, whose great genius also wasn't sufficiently recognised in his own time. Slighted by the people of the village who don't recognise the merit of his powers and his right to express his libidinous urges in public - stealing a kiss from the mayor's daughter Diemut - Kunrad calls a fire famine upon the village during the feast of the Summer Solstice, when the children are preparing to set their celebratory bonfires alight.

Strauss isn't exactly obscure about his intentions in how he sets himself up as the successor to Wagner, but it's hard to know whether he is being either tongue-in-cheek or just immodesty secure of his own talent. Musically, Feuersnot is so cleverly constructed and brilliantly composed that you'd have a hard time denying the evident skill with which Strauss weaves his way through Wagner references and places his own spin on them. That spin, taking Wagner's mythic spiritualism and giving it a more earthy sensuality, could be considered vulgar, but this is entirely in keeping with other Strauss works of this time (Ein Heldenleben in 1898 and Symphonia Domestica in 1903) that would elevate the personal and the domestic to grandiose levels. Or simply find them subjects more worthy and relevant to the general public.

However we regard such behaviour, the brilliance of Strauss' technique and its dramatic application in an opera is plainly evident. It does however lead to a provocative conclusion in Feuersnot that might still be problematic and controversial. Having been subjected to Kunrad's fire famine, the terrified people of the village, and even her own father, urge Diemut to put aside her maidenly honour and get jiggy with Kunrad so that they can rekindle the fire on this Midsummer Night. She and Kunrad do the deed - Strauss bringing a more sensuous physicality to the music than you would find with Wagner - and Diemut, impressed by the prowess of the magician, acknowledges his place as her true master.

The 'legend' of Feuersnot is a thin one, even for a one-act opera (a 'Singgedicht in one act'), with little dramatic drive. Emma Dante however recognises that it's about music and not magic, and brings that not terribly well concealed subtext out in a number of ways. She also attempts to capture the huge variety and dynamic that lies within the score and represent that on the stage with circus acts and dancers to give an impression of constant colour and movement. This can be entertaining and sometimes annoying, but it does certainly bring some liveliness and a certain tongue-in-cheek irreverence that adds to tone and enlivens a staging of work. The final 'fire dance' scene in particular more than justifies the approach, finding a colourful and meaningful way to represent the otherwise problematic ending.

The musical performances all contribute to making this an 'illuminating' production of a rare Strauss opera. Gabriele Ferro underplays the Wagner and emphasises more of the familiar later Strauss characteristics in the score. Nicola Beller Carbone has Wagnerian strength aplenty in the role of Diemut, and although Dietrich Henschel doesn't quite have the force or the volume for a 'heldenbaritone' he sings and plays the role of Kunrad with a mischievous sparkle and verve. None of this is perhaps enough to see Feuersnot reconsidered as canonical Strauss, but it is unquestionably Strauss, and presented in the best possible light here.

The 2014 Teatro Massimo production of Feuersnot is released on Bluray by Arthaus Musik, and it looks and sounds terrific in High Definition. The BD has a 12-minute 'Making Of' that gives some insights into the work and the approach to it, and there is also an informative essay on the work in the enclosed booklet. The disc is region-free, but subtitles are in English, German and Korean only.