Wagner - Der fliegende Höllander (Florence, 2019)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Höllander

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2019

Fabio Luisi, Paul Curran, Thomas Gazheli, Marjorie Owens, Mikhail Petrenko, Bernhard Berchtold, Annette  Jahns, Timothy Oliver

C-Major - Blu-ray

There's no question that Paul Curran's 2019 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production gets the mood and tone of Der fliegende Höllander exactly as you would expect a spooky maritime ghost story to look, populated by dark dishevelled figures and bathed in an eerie cold green-blue light. This mood of menace is enhanced through a large projected backdrop of raging seas as Daland's ship is run aground and a dark ship with tattered sails materialises, silhouetted against the background of a stormy sky. Keeping in that vein with no modern costumes or props, Act I of this production holds no real surprises, just the appropriate tone to set up Wagner's tale of an exiled wanderer seeking redemption and the love of a good woman.

There are however various strands you can develop out of that; the self-portrait of an artist in exile, an outsider with great riches to share daring to brave the tides of public opinion, but the strongest theme and the one that certainly overrides all the others by the time we get to the end of Wagner's first successful exploration of his own developing means of expression, is of course that of redemption. It's the Dutchman who is saved, but it's Senta who saves him and she is the centre of the opera, structurally, musically and thematically.

For director Paul Curran the idea appears to be that she's a woman who doesn't fit in with her time; she's a feminist before there was a movement, a figurehead if not a leader. In this production she's not sitting sewing with the other women as she should be while her man is out at sea, but she's prepared to believe in a different dream where a woman can make her own choices, as grotesque as that idea might appear to the other women. But is Senta really a proto-feminist? Does she not willingly enter into a marriage of convenience so that her father can line his pockets with his son-in-law's rare wealth? Well, that's for the production to persuade us, and it doesn't totally convince.

In contrast to the coldness and darkness of Act I, Act II is consequently bathed in warmth. The gathering of ladies sewing are all dressed in soft neutral dull brown and yellow colours that sets off the fiery individuality of Senta who stands out from them in a Gothic green silk and satin gown and blazing red hair. Perhaps more crucially, the Florence production has the extra benefit of having in Marjorie Owens a voice that can express that warmth and longing in her voice. Her's is a gorgeous lyrical Senta of rare beauty that holds you mesmerised as she relates her story of the Flying Dutchman. I've often found that Fabio Luisi is a conductor who pays close attention to the stage and the singers, pacing to their strengths, leaving them room to truly express the depth of feeling that lies within this hugely melodramatic opera storyline, and he strikes up an effective relationship that really brings the best out of Owens and consequently out of the work as a whole.

With an emphasis on mood again in Act III - this production of Der fliegende Höllander using the three separate act version rather than the no-interval run-together version - there is again good use made of the projections on a front screen as well as the back screen to capture the ghostly appearance of the Dutchman's crew. Musically, Luisi doesn't really get behind this scene quite as well, but handles the subsequent scene between Senta and Erik with gentle poignant lyricism. The closing moments of the opera however are a thing of beauty, both in terms its staging of Senta's sacrifice and redemption and in how Luisi allows the majesty of the moment to hit home.

There's little here however to carry through any definitive view on Senta as a feminist other than her making her own choices, but if there's nothing strikingly original or distinctive about the production there is nonetheless something compelling and refreshing about how Paul Curran approaches the emotional content of the work. It works well in conjunction with how Luisi conducts the work gracefully rather than stridently or overly forcefully - although he can hit those dramatic punches when required - but also evidently in how it's sung. The combination of those elements creates its own identity that blends beautifully with Wagner's Romantic vision. I personally found it spellbinding.

I'm not greatly familiar with the singers here but pleasantly surprised with the quality of the singing and the interpretation. Marjorie Owens as I've already mentioned is impressive and I look forward to hearing her again. Mikhail Petrenko is an excellent Daland, wonderfully rich timbre and enunciation, even if Daland rarely makes any great impression as a character. Thomas Gazheli's Dutchman is suitably charismatic in a dark enigmatic and slightly dishevelled fraying at the edges kind of way, persuasively capturing that sense of the melancholic suffering artist eternally searching for a Romantic truth. Again Fabio Luisi supports and works with his voice wonderfully. Bernhard Berchtold is also good as Erik.

The Blu-ray from C-Major presents this production well with a vividly detailed HD image filmed in 4K Ultra HD and warm stereo and surround audio mixes. Subtitles are provided in German, English, Korean and Japanese. There are no extra features on the disc and the booklet contains just a tracklist, a brief overview of the work with a few observations on the production and a synopsis, but it's an excellent presentation of the production.

Links: Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Verdi - Simon Boccanegra (Paris, 2018)

Giuseppe Verdi - Simon Boccanegra

L'Opéra National de Paris, 2018

Fabio Luisi, Calixto Bieito, Ludovic Tézier, Mika Kares, Maria Agresta, Francesco Demuro, Nicola Alaimo, Mikhail Timoshenko, Cyrille Lovighi, Virginia Leva-Poncet

Paris Opera Cinema Live - 13 December 2018

Verdi's mature period operas have always been problematic, their dramatic plot lines never quite keeping up with the growing maturity and sophistication of the composer's musical writing or compromised by Verdi attempting to rework material to suit French grand opera needs. As far as Simon Boccanegra is concerned, it's another case of rewriting, but rather than revisiting an earlier work first performed in 1857 to suit a new audience 23 years later, Verdi seems to be working to his own musical imperative, drawing deeper on his own experiences of family struggles and his observations of human nature during the upheaval of the Italian Risorgimento.

As a consequence, Simon Boccanegra is quite unlike other Verdi works, seeped in a tone of deep sombre melancholy that only the darkest passages of I due Foscari and Don Carlos can come close to matching. Recognising the failings in Piave's original libretto, Verdi enlisted the services of Arrigo Boito, with whom he would craft his late masterpieces, and Boito does bring a greater poetic touch to the work and human feeling to the sentiments, but the themes remain essentially the same as those consistent throughout Verdi's operas - love versus duty and one's responsibility towards family versus the people and the nation as a whole.

The reworking of the material however leaves the problem of Simon Boccanegra consisting of a patchwork of scenes with leaps in time periods and gaps in the drama, and when staged it just never seems to flow or hold together despite the insistent tone and musical language employed by Verdi. And it really is music on another level, separated by a vast gulf from those early works. The youthful force and drive is still there, but the difference here is that it expresses internalised drama rather than underscoring melodramatic plot developments of war, vengeance, fate, padded out with popular laments, pleas to god, and drinking songs.

It's a little unfair to characterise Verdi in those terms, but it just illustrates how far Verdi's ambitions and ability have moved on from the standard template and from the necessity of writing to meet the expectations of an audience. Some of those problematic dramatic elements remain in Simon Boccanegra of course, and it seems unlikely that a director like Calixto Bieito would really want to or be able to make anything convincing out of them. Somehow however, without denying all the colour, drama, fury and sensitivity that makes up a Verdi opera somehow Bieito lays open Simon Boccanegra in his Paris Opera production in a way that somehow gets to the heart of it. It's an absolutely stunning experience.

Once you get rid of the period accoutrements and costumes of 14th century Genoa, and once you dispense with the distractions of the plot and the near impossibility of making it seem credible, there's room to look for the deeper sentiments at the heart of Simon Boccanegra. Susanne Gschwender's set designs, the stage stripped of everything but the huge skeleton of the hull of a ship that revolves to show us what would appear to be a representation of the mind of Simon Boccanegra, the Doge of Genoa. Seen lying prone on the floor, a position he also takes having been poisoned in Act II, it's tempting to see the fractured narrative and its strange outpourings of emotion and grief as that of a fevered mind of a former corsair viewing it in a heightened state.

And that works well for a narrative as fractured as Simon Boccanegra. Bieito is then able to introduce a vital element that is usually absent from the dramatic presentation of the work but which is ever-present in Verdi's music; Maria. The association of news of the death of Maria at the very moment that he is proclaimed Doge creates a fusion that haunts Boccanegra. It doesn't just cause problems with Maria's father that lead to political plotting and family feuds, but - along with the disappearance of Simon and Maria's daughter - it's also something that has a deep personal impact on him, a melancholic yearning associated with his office that remains with him all his life.

That sentiment is what you can hear when you hear the music that Verdi has composed for the opera, and it's there from the very first note, Fabio Luisi drawing the darkness out of the detail and the silences in the score. It's appropriate then that director Calixto Bieito introduces Maria as a ghostly presence throughout the work, even showing her normally off-stage reported death by having her father drag the dying woman onto the stage to confront the husband who let her down. The image is powerful, and Boccanegra cannot shake it. She haunts the ship of Simon's mind as he himself lies dying, caught up in his own melancholic reflection, sadness and regret.

The risk is that this internalised perspective aligned with Verdi's music could push this further over into high melodrama, but by allowing nothing extraneous to distract - much as Verdi's complete stripping away of any dramatic underscoring or ornamentation does - Bieito's production is able to focus on the sheer depth of feeling a father has for his daughter, for his family, for the regrets that have allowed political events beyond his control impinge on their natural development. It's something that Verdi would very much want to express from a personal viewpoint and Bieito's production permits this much better than any version of Simon Boccanegra I've ever seen before.

There's no effort to clarify the complexity of the plot or the gaps in credibility that come with Simon being reunited with his lost daughter, but there is every ounce of emotion put into expressing such longing and such feelings. If there's one place where the value of Bieito's work as a director shows, it's in his directing of the performers to make all those sentiments come to life. There's no opera theatrics here either in the mannerisms of the delivery of the singing; all of it comes from the heart, which might mean it's not quite naturalistic, but in the context of Verdi's music that is simply perfect, unadorned, unguarded, unredacted pure emotion.

As is ever the challenge with Verdi - even in those roles that aren't created purely to show off the abilities of the lead performers - is getting singers capable of handling the considerable vocal challenges that go along with the advances of characterisation in these later operas. If Maria Agresta couldn't always carry the fullness of sound that is needed, there aren't many who can meet the demands of the extraordinarily challenging range required for Amelia/Maria, but her performance was as intense and heartfelt as it needed to be. Ludovic Tézier continues to develop into one of the best Verdi baritones around and gave a commanding performance here, equally intense, equally heartfelt. When you add in the kind of delivery given by an outstanding Francesco Demuro as Gabriele Adorno and the contrast provided by Nicola Alaimo's Paolo, the results were truly shattering.

Links: Opéra National de Paris, Culturebox

Strauss - Salome (Genoa, 2016)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa - 2016

Fabio Luisi, Rosetta Cucchi, Lise Lindstrom, Jane Henschel, Herwig Pecoraro, Mark Delavan, Patrick Vogel, Marina Ogii, Marcello Nardis, Alessandro Fantoni, Naoyuki Okada, Jason Kim, Alessandro Busi, Frano Lufi, Manuel Pierattelli, Roberto Maietta, Luca Gallo, Alessandro Busi, Beate Vollack

Teatro Carlo Felice Live Streaming - 25 May 2016

Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice production of Salome doesn't appear to offer any specific interpretation or modernisation of the work. If it seems to take a more generic approach that never strays far from the expected lines, it nonetheless captures the destructive and almost self-defeating essence of what is vital about Strauss's first great operatic masterpiece.

The source and the context of the creation of Strauss's version of Salome are highly relevant in assessing its importance, its greatness, its legacy, as in some respects it's emblematic of a time of great change in music and in modernist thinking. Strauss had seen Wilde's play in a fairly faithful German-language translation by Hedwig Lachmann and the play's ideas and sensibility clearly resonate with what was happening in turn of the century Vienna. The impact that the work made on him provided Strauss with a challenge to replicate it within the world of music.

As a source, and for what the work says, Oscar Wilde's scandalous play is far more important than the original Biblical tale. All Wilde's plays - even the drawing room comedies like 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' - are subversive in one way or another, gently mocking Victorian mores and attitudes. 'Salome' however is a little more daring. Written in French, Wilde knew that the play would never be performed in England due to blasphemy laws that prevented Biblical characters appearing on the stage, and it freed him creatively to expand on the florid poetry that would twist the exotic Biblical setting into a taboo-breaking tale of forbidden lust and death. 

In some respects then, at a level above the purely textual, 'Salome' is about destroying conventional views; quite literally delving into the cistern of corruption that lies beneath the comfortable facade of respectable society. It's easy now to see what attracted Strauss to the challenge of putting this transgressive text to a new and more rigorous form of music. This was the kind of subject that would take the Liebestod philosophy of Strauss's idol Wagner one stage further in musical terms, break with convention and upset a few people. There wasn't much point in doing anything else and, up to that point, there would be nothing that pushed musical boundaries further than Salome.

So perfectly interlocked is the music with the text, the entire piece one continuous flow of intense poetry, that Salome really is a work that speaks for itself. In practical terms the set needs to be generally all-purpose for the locations of the continuous one-act opera and, like Strauss's subsequent opera Elektra, it needs to be focussed on establishing mood. The Carlo Felice production in Genoa takes a fairly generic approach then that is vaguely Biblical in look and feel, but perhaps actually looks a little more Greek tragedy. In fact, I'm sure they could use the same set just as effectively for Elektra with minimal changes, but there is at least a commonality between the treatment of the subjects in these two one-act Strauss tone-poem operas.

Salome, like Elektra, is about a corrupt or degenerate family (a nation, a way of life) that is being eaten up by its own descent into self-destruction. The facade of respectability is being stripped away to reveal decadence and dark lusts, and much of this is already there in the music and the poetry of the libretto. Tiziano Santi's sets provide a fairly conventional response to this, with a dark pit in the centre of the stage from which Jochanaan's warnings of the coming of a new way emanate. Salome dangerously flirts around this pit, the product of a corrupt union, trying to bend the promise of Jochanaan's visions to her own twisted will. Aside from the requirements of the stage direction and lighting to meet the drama, the only significant change to the set is to show the downfall of a royal line in the fracturing of the surrounding marble framework of the palace.

Fabio Luisi keeps a tight rein on proceedings from the orchestra pit, but like Rosetta Cucchi's direction, it doesn't really seem to plumb the dark depths of the work, although admittedly in a work as intense as this, that's difficult to judge from a live internet stream rather than from inside the theatre. Lise Lindstrom has that precise Turandot voice that matches Salome's requirements of meeting Wagnerian force with Puccinian high lyricism. The dynamic between her fluctuating states of reverie and fury isn't perhaps quite as pronounced as it might be but she has the voice and all the dangerous allure for this role. Herwig Pecoraro and Jane Henschel show their suitability and experience in the roles of Herod and Herodias. Mark Delavan is a fabulous deeply intoned Jochanaan.

Links: Teatro Carlo Felice Streaming

Donizetti - L'Elisir d'amore (La Scala, 2015 - Webcast)

Gaetano Donizetti - L'Elisir d'amore

Teatro alla Scala at Malpensa Airport, Milan - 2015

Fabio Luisi, Grischa Asagaroff, Bianca Tognocchi, Vittorio Grigolo, Mattia Olivieri, Michele Pertusi, Eleonora Buratto, Jan Pezzali, Mauro Edantippe

ARTE Concert - 17 September 2015

Although I've come to appreciate and admire some of Donizetti's lesser known works, I've never been a great fan of what is probably his most popular work, L'Elisir d'Amore. I have to admit though that its popularity does at least lead to some inventive settings and reinterpretations, even if the humour and characterisation that can be derived from its situations have always seemed rather limited. It's a work however that merits attention particularly when it's performed by an Italian company and you would expect La Scala in Milan to bring out the full value of the work. The essential Italian quality of the work is supported here by an unusual setting that if it's not the most inventive is at least challenging.

Anyone who believes that opera is still a vital art form where even Donizetti still has a place and has something to communicate to the world today, has to admire any attempt to get opera out of the theatre and away from theatricality, and attempt to reach a new audience. Cinema showings and internet streaming are one way, as is the use of directing talent from the theatre and cinema, as well as the employment of directors with distinctive visions and a determination to apply it to classic works. Physically taking the stagingess out of the opera house is also an admirable endeavour, and surprisingly, one that often works remarkably well. La Scala's attempt to stage L'Elisir d'Amore at Malpensa airport in Milan starts out like a good idea then, but it doesn't successfully follow through on its ambitions.

The airport is a surprisingly versatile place for an opera, and it's not the first time a live TV broadcast of an opera has been made from one. A few years ago there was an impressive and spectacular production of Mozart's Die Entführung dem Serail broadcast live from the airport at Salzburg. Adapting the public spaces and even the runway to the needs of the libretto, it even succeeded in putting a relevant modern spin on the intent of the work. Die Entführung isn't a particularly deep work by any means, but it does have rather more to it than L'Elisir d'Amore, you would think. So how does flashmobbing Donizetti at Milan-Malpensa fit in with the 'themes' or even just the comic situations of Donizetti's sparkling melodramma giocoso?

Well, it's a bright, lively opera and one that suits an open public performance. This Elisir opens in an airport cafe where Nemorino is a waiter and Adina the oblivious, indifferent owner sitting reading her book while Nemorino pines over her failure to respond to his admiration. Belcore is, of course, a handsome pilot in smart uniform, flanked by glamorous air hostesses as he parades through the concourse to the departure gates. Dulcamara is an amateur pilot in leather jacket and goggles who is flown is a small private plane with a portable drinks cabinet that he sets up on a prepared stage. Belcore of course recruits Nemorino not into the army here, but as a member of his cabin crew. It's not a perfect match for the opera and the locations are not used as inventively as Salzburg. Instead of a stage in the opera house, all they manage to do is set one up in an airport with airport travellers seated around it.

Having made some effort at least in the first Act to have it semi-credibly located in an airport, the airport workers inexplicably abandon their modern-day dress and behaviour momentarily in Act II for clownish pantomime costumes, marching onto the stage built in the check-in area to celebrate the coming wedding of Adina and Belcore. I don't know why this occurs, but it looks ridiculous. Further defeating the point, much of the remainder of the work subsequently takes place in this main location, on a stage, singing out to travellers who obviously have a long time to wait for their flights. 'Una furtiva lagrima' at least is well staged as the new cabin crew member Nemorino takes his bags through security. Unfortunately, the artificiality of most of the production is compounded by the inclusion of a French and an Italian host who step in now and again to explain to the TV audience what is going on, interviewing members of the audience, and they even discuss aspects of the work with the singers, partly in character, partly stepping out if it.  

It's not entirely satisfactory, but some respond better to the setting than others and you can get away with pretty much anything in L'Elisir d'Amore if you enter into it with the spirited indulgence of the commedia dell'arte origins of the work. With the production settling for traditional over the opportunities offered by the airport locations, all that is left is the quality of the opera performance itself, and fortunately, it's reasonably good. Vittorio Grigolo is a bright and committed Nemorino, singing well and Michele Pertusi gives us his usual entertaining Dulcamara, a familiar comic role that is comfortably within his range. Mattia Olivieri is not quite as commanding as he might be for Belcore but proves to be a suitable rival for Adina's affections. There's nothing particularly cruel or misguided about this Adina - just a woman who can't make her mind up and is ready to act spitefully on a whim. I've seen Eleonora Buratto sing this role before in Asagaroff's production at Zurich and she plays it well here again, if not having quite the full force of delivery.

I don't know if there is anything more to be gained from staging L'Elisir d'Amore in an airport than is already apparent in its simple storyline. What the La Scala production demonstrates is perhaps not so much that L'Elisir is still a relevant work with some important message for today, as much as the way that opera can be something living and vital without compromising on its essence. There aren't many other popular forms of art that are capable of being performed live in a public place with such a high level of artistic merit as this. Art installations in public places have limited appeal and no-one seems particularly interested in putting theatre on in public places, yet somehow La Scala are able to pitch up Fabio Luisi, a full orchestra and some of the finest singers in Italian opera into Milan-Malpensa airport with a custom-made production and film the whole proceedings live without there being any significant decline in artistic quality.

One might have hoped for more however, because really, this is just a perfunctory run-though of the opera, particularly from Fabio Luisi. The performances do at least have the kind of freshness that revitalises the work to some extent and the airport setting initially serves as a good showcase (or gimmick if you like) to show a wider audience how entertaining, accessible and versatile opera can be. Perhaps it's the change of environment, but even the more jaded viewer or one unconvinced by L'Elisir d'Amore can observe the artistry involved in a new light. It's live and it's an event; one that, despite the use of discreet radio microphones and headsets, doesn't compromise the essential character or nature of the art form, but rather shows how enduring and adaptable it can be.

Links: Teatro alla Scala, ARTE Concert

Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Zurich, 2015 - Zurich)

Vincenzo Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Opernhaus Zürich, 2015

Fabio Luisi, Christof Loy, Alexei Botnarciuc, Olga Kulchynska, Joyce DiDonato, Benjamin Bernheim, Roberto Lorenzi, Gieorgij Puchalski 

Zurich - 5 July 2015

Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi bears little enough relation to Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' as it is, so it's a bit of a challenge to add another level of distance from the original and still meet expectations. But then the director here for Zurich's new production is Christof Loy, so some deviation and modernisation from the original stage directions is expected, and if anyone can make that work it's Loy. Loy is fortunate - but it can't be a coincidence - to be able to work with great performers in such productions. In the case of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, the team is an exceptional one, and the new production consequently an overwhelming success.

Essentially what is left of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' in I Capuleti e i Montecchi (the libretto actually taken from another source) is two rival Italian families teetering on the brink of all-out gang war, and a young couple from the two families who want to get married and live a life without fear of the constant feuds and assassinations. It's 'The Godfather' really, Romeo the Michael Corleone of the family, a young man with progressive ideas refusing to inherit the role as the boss of a murderous mob family, but he is drawn in against his will, unable to escape the blood ties that determine how he must act.

Put like that, it seems obvious to stage I Capuleti e i Montecchi in such a way, but it's not at all obvious that it would work or that Bellini's bel canto music is up to the relocation of a more modern setting. Between Fabio Luisi's musical direction and Loy's dramatic direction of it on the stage, it turns out however that it is more than capable of sustaining just such an interpretation. The mood is well established during the overture, the revolving set showing a series of rooms littered with bodies of gentlemen in suits. Bodies piled up in offices, in anterooms, in bathrooms, in bedrooms. We also see a young child being prepared for a wedding, and later see her as a young woman. As the stage revolves and the scenes flow, we see however that she is clearly traumatised by the carnage. Death is all she has ever known.

The mood is sustained by the dimly lit, sepia toned lighting through the Venetian blinds spilling shadowy lines across the wood-panelled sparsely decorated rooms. The rooms are invariably inhabited by powerful men in dark suits and tuxedos, standing around looking threatening. The tension is such that you feel a fight could break out at any moment and inevitably it does, though mostly off-stage, the set revolving like the sweep of a camera pan to the adjoining room where more bodies litter the floor. Loy also brings in an additional non-singing character to shadow the performers. He/she is an adjutant for Romeo, a go-between that permits the otherwise unlikely frequent incursions that the Montecchi Romeo seems to be able to freely make into Capuletti turf to visit Giulietta's room. This silent sinister figure however also incorporates the musical motif of premonitory death that lies between them.

There's a lot more to making the staging of I Capuleti e i Montecchi work than simply dressing the sets and the characters like it were 'The Godfather' although Alexei Botnarciuc gives a great Brando impersonation as Capellio, the head of the Cappelli family. It's Loy's direction of the singers as actors that makes it work convincingly, his use of the stage as ever impeccable, every single scene and movement contributing to the drama, looking cool and stylish. It's not enough however to turn a Romeo and Juliet story into a Mob film, and Loy doesn't neglect this either. You never at any stage (including the violent opening overture) forget that there are other scarcely any less violent passions involved here between Romeo and Giulietta.

Fabio Luisi recognises this too and his conducting of Philharmonia Zürich was remarkable, fully exploring the moods underlying the melodies. With a view of the orchestra, there were occasions when my attention was drawn away from the stage, just to see how Luisi was vigorously and precisely managing the orchestra to marshal Bellini's musical forces in service of the drama. Any distraction however is short-lived due to the increasing tensions that occur on the stage and by the singing performances that interpret them.

If there was rigour in terms of matching the intensity of the music with the dramatic direction, it was only enhanced by a uniformly impressive cast. Joyce DiDonato is not unexpectedly something of a phenomenon as Romeo, convincing in the trouser role, if not quite comfortable wearing the boots it seems. A few high notes were less than secure, but as a whole, the dramatic nature of the role suited her and she sang and played with real intensity. Olga Kulchynska was more than a capable match as Giulietta, her voice soaring with the high drama. Benjamin Bernheim also made a very strong impression as Tebaldo, his performance warmly received by the audience at the curtain call.

This production is now available to view for free streaming on-line on ARTE Concert.

Links: Festspiele Zürich, ARTE Concert

Verdi - Macbeth (Metropolitan Opera, 2014 - HD-Live)

Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth

Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014

Fabio Luisi, Adrian Noble, Željko Lučić, René Pape, Anna Netrebko, Claudia Waite, Christopher Job, Raymond Renault, Noah Baetge, Joseph Calleja, Moritz Linn, Richard Bernstein, Seth Malkin

The Met Live in HD - 11 October 2014

There's at least one good reason for selecting Macbeth as the opening broadcast in the Met's 2014-15 Live in HD season, as opposed to the actual season opener Le Nozze di Figaro (which will be broadcast later this month). It's become a recent tradition to open the HD broadcasts with the popular attraction of Anna Netrebko, and opera's brightest star - possibly now at the peak of her career - has a new role in her repertoire - Lady Macbeth. That's something worth reviving a readily available production of Macbeth for, and Adrian Noble's 2007 production fits the bill.

Considering the liberties that Verdi and his librettist Piave take with Shakespeare's drama, it probably helps that there's a former RSC director behind the production to anchor it back in Shakespeare's themes. The strength of Noble's Macbeth consequently is its adherence to mood and character, and even if it gives the appearance of modernisation, it remains fairly traditional in its presentation. It's a good half-way house that is typical of the Met, where modernisation is acceptable if it is visually impressive and doesn't go as far as reworking the concept or more deeply exploring the themes of the work in a challenging or revisionist way.

Noble's production seems to borrow something of its mood from Alfred Hitchcock, with Lady Macbeth even transformed here into a Hitchock blonde. There's a sinister quality to Mark Thompson's set and costume designs that makes it a bit 'Dial M for Macbeth', the setting dark, misty and moonlit, the costumes vaguely 1940s. The witches wear granny-coats with handbags (think Monty Python's 'pepperpot' old ladies) and there's a more elegant formal dress of the royal court, most notably in the banquet scene. The military scenes however reflect a more modern image of war, but not too high-tech - the jeeps, combat gear and automatic guns having something of the appearance of the Bosnian war.

It's all very much iconic imagery that has resonance and meaning to a modern audience, without introducing high-technology 'magic' that could distract from the very necessary hands-on nature of mad ambition and the bloody business of murder. Is this a dagger which I see before me? It certainly is. It's not a drone or anything else that is designed to make some modern political point about the morality of killing and war in the present day. That's not what Macbeth is about. Nor is it specifically about national identity. Verdi certainly made something more of the Italian Risorgimento struggle in his opera ('Patria opressa') but there are no such references in this production, and little even that relates it to its Scottish setting. There are no saltires, no tartan or flags, and no attempt to update it to make reference to the recent independence vote in Scotland either.

The generic setting and non-specific period allow the focus to fall back onto the human question of our relationship to power, ambition and murder. Fortunately, although it diverts in some plot developments from Shakespeare's vision, Verdi's writing for Macbeth sees the composer at his most inspired. Macbeth is still a relatively early work in the composer's 'galley years', but the quality of the source material (even in translation) clearly spoke to the composer who would much later revisit his beloved Shakespeare in Otello and Falstaff. The selection of scenes and numbers for Macbeth allow him to align power and melody to new levels of intensity, and to stronger characterisation than is found in those other early Verdi pot-boilers.

Melodically and in the setting of the scenes to standard numbers and arias, the composition of Macbeth is wonderful, but the real quality of the work - particularly in the revised version used here - is in Verdi's writing for the voice. Get a couple of great singers into those roles with a strong chorus and Macbeth can be a thrilling and visceral experience. Željko Lučić and René Pape have a track record with this production at the Met in the roles of Macbeth and Banquo. It's perhaps unfair to merely pass over their performances here as "solid" - Lučić in particular is shaping up to be a great Verdi baritone and doesn't put a foot wrong, hampered only by not very special direction - but when you have the right person in the role this is Lady Macbeth's opera, which that means it's Anna Netrebko's.

Quite simply, Netrebko is phenomenal, singing a challenging role with apparent ease, delivering the signature 'La luce langue' aria with remarkable control and tightly focussed precision. She almost makes it look too easy, and that might be a problem. She has clearly waited for the right time to tackle Macbeth, and has prepared for it well (trying out some arias on CD and a couple of live performances of the role at the Munich festival this summer), but at the same time the performance is almost too cool and studious, and it could do with a little loosening up.

That is perhaps just being too picky about what is by any reasonable consideration an outstanding performance, but there are occasionally flashes that show that Netrebko is capable of bringing much more to the role than the direction really allows. Her Act II banquet brindisi ('Si colmi il calice'), for example, isn't quite so joyful, but shows her growing anger with Macbeth succumbing to his terrifying visions of Banquo's ghost, flashing him furious glances and singing the second verse almost between gritted teeth.  There's a taste of the fire that could underlie the cold, calculated behaviour here, and it's evident in 'La luce langue', but too little of it is seen elsewhere.

The same however could be said of the production as a whole. Some scenes are handled well, while others are rather static, the cast left to stand and sing out to the audience. In addition to the aforementioned banquet scene, where the bloody ghost of René Pape's Banquo makes a great impression, the scene of the King's burial is well staged, the tensions spilling over in such a way that the suspicions of Banquo and Macduff (sung well by Joseph Calleja) can clearly be seen to set them up in opposition to Macbeth.  Fabio Luisi had the measure of the work, finding wonderful character as well as force in the score, and the Met chorus impressed, but in a way that confirmed that the quality of the production lay more in the delivery of the musical performance than in the largely static stage direction.

Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier

Richard Strauss- Der Rosenkavalier

Opernhaus Zürich, 2013

Fabio Luisi, Sven Eric-Bechtolf, Nina Stemme, Vesselina Kasarova, Alfred Muff, Martin Gantner, Rachel Harnisch, Liuba Chuchrova, Irène Friedli, Caroline Fuss, Francisca Montiel, Olivera Dukic, Verena Hasselmann, Michael Laurenz, Lukas Jakobski, Andreas Winkler, Dmitry Ivanchey, Erik Anstine, Martin Zysset, Stefan Pop, Thomas Pütz

Zürich - 4 July 2013

I'm not sure that Sven Eric-Bechtolf's direction or Marianne and Rolf Glittenberg's set design for Zurich's Der Rosenkavalier really play to the strengths of the work.  It's not so much that it's taken out of period - the period is important to a certain extent, but only to highlight the work's main theme of time of life ever changing and renewing - or that its design is a little bit strange, as much as the fact that it doesn't seem to offer any new ideas or bring out other dimensions in a work that offers a great deal of richness. Fabio Luisi's conducting too seemed a little heavy handed in places for my liking, not really chiming with the nature of the work's shimmering beauty and playful pastiche, but as the work itself gained momentum, wading though the over-stretched farce to its remarkable conclusion, everything eventually settled into place.

Act I however scarcely looks like the Vienna of the time of the Empress Maria Theresa, with trees growing through the floor of the Marschallin's bedchamber and servants in Turkish or Eastern dress.  There is at least a brightness and openness of space with early morning light coming through the high windows that gives an indication of the abandonment to the moment that Marschallin and Octavian have shared in bed together.  It's only a temporary moment of bliss, a fleeting escape from the business and responsibilities that comes with the new day.  Those appointments duly arrive and play out strangely here - the Italian tenor for example appearing to be a Chinese automaton in a box - but rather more of a problem is that fails to capture the sense of Mozart opera parody that should be there when the lecherous Ochs arrives and chases the Cherubino-like Octavian who is dressed in a maid's costume as Mariandel.  The lightness is missing and the sense of playfulness that is critical to establish that the old ways are about to give way to the new.

If if fails to capture the wonder of the old, the strength of this production is in its expression of the new, and that comes through rather wonderfully in Act II. Act I is long and often tedious, but it's necessary to establish the nature of Marschallin's world and her realisation that she's getting old, that the world is changing, that her lover will leave her today or tomorrow for someone younger.   When that realisation comes there is nonetheless a reluctance to submit to the inevitable that Strauss captures so brilliantly, so precisely and so movingly in the music of the act finale.  Act II on the other hand is about the crystalising of time, capturing the present and living in the moment.  It's about a new rising class, the nouveau riche (the Faninals) and its incompatibility with the old (Ochs), it's about falling in love (Octavian and Sophie), forgetting the past (Marschallin) as precious as it once was, and not even thinking about the future (that's Act III).  It's all about the now.

The Zurich production sets the second Act in the kitchen of the Faninal residence - pale blue with a wall of plates - which again adds nothing, but everything that is needed here is in the meeting of Sophie and Octavian and it's given proper direction and prominence here.  Amidst the boorishness of Baron Ochs and the social pretensions of Faninal, this one moment is made real. Everything around them, all the bustle of the kitchen preparations, literally stops at the moment of their encounter.  While the singing can't exactly be said to be lacking in the casting of Nina Stemme in the role of Marshallin and the experienced Alfred Muff playing Ochs, it's appropriate here that the casting of Octavian and Sophie are the brightest points of this production.  Vesselina Kasarova's usual mannerisms are relatively restrained and any extravagance in her delivery can be put down to the youthful exuberance and vigour of Octavian's nature.  Irène Friedli's Sophie too is simply marvellous, her soprano one of soaring beauty and vivid expression, one moreover that complements Octavian and the other singers.

Act III of Der Rosenkavalier can always be problematic in this work, but - again despite unhelpfully returning to what looks like the inn improvised in a marquee in the Marschallin's boudoir - it's here that the Zurich team work best.  Instead of going for the obvious farce that is very much what Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannstahl were aiming for, Bechtolf introduces a darker element into the proceedings and downplays Ochs' oafishness.  Death is implied in the figures dressed in skeleton costumes that obstruct Ochs auf Lerchenau's intentions and deflate his pomposity.  He's another relic that is not going to go easy in this new world, but his time has come.  Marschallin and Ochs gather up what dignity and respect remains for their age and position and accept that it's time for them to step aside and let the young have their time free from the rules of the past.  All that is captured wonderfully in Nina Stemme's deportment and the lush velvet timbre of her voice and in Alfred Muff's more gentle and sensitive interpretation of the nature of Ochs.

What's also vitally important is that the idea that something beautiful is dying is not only recognised but brilliantly and fully expressed in the music, and here Luisi's conducting is just perfect.  The waltz music feels old-hat, but at the same time nostalgic of another wonderful time, the neo-romanticism and chromatic language speaks of the beauty of the now, while the discordant chords of the Rosenkavalier theme speak of the music of the future, Strauss miraculously fusing them together indivisibly into a thing of incredible beauty and unbearable sadness.  And, for all the flaws and variations of tone in this production, that unquestionably was the sentiment you were left with at the end of the performance in Zurich.

Bellini - La Straniera

Vincenzo Bellini - La Straniera

Opernhaus Zürich, 2013

Fabio Luisi, Christof Loy, Edita Gruberova, Veronica Simeoni, Dario Schmunck,  Franco Vassallo, Benjamin Bernheim, Pavel Daniluk, Reinhard Mayr

Opernhaus Zürich - 2 July 2013

There's really only one reason for the existence of a work like La Straniera. Like most bel canto operas, it's a highly charged drama of limited plot credibility but it gives the lead soprano ample opportunity to demonstrate her singing abilities. There are occasionally other qualities to be found, and with Bellini the music is usually filled with glorious melodies that are a little more attuned to the dramatic content, which is fortunate since the plot of La Straniera needs all the assistance it can get. Fortunately, the production for the 2013 summer festival at the Zurich Opera House had one of the best teams imaginable to get the best out of the work with Fabio Luisi conducting, Christof Loy directing and Edita Gruberova singing the lead role of the mysterious stranger.

In terms of plot, well if you're a member of the chorus playing the townspeople, you're thinking would go along something like this. Who is that mysterious stranger seen moping around town, dressed in black? We've always known she's up to no good and now we have something on her. She's been seen as a threat to the forthcoming marriage of Arturo to Isoletta, and now she's only gone and actually killed Baron Valdeburgo. Let's put her to death! Oh, hold on - here's Arturo and he's claiming it was he who killed the baron. And now here's the baron and he says he's not dead after all. Well, she must still be guilty of something since she's keeping her identity secret. Can we still not just put her to death? Oh wait, she's the Queen! What!?

It takes a lot to make that kind of plot work. It goes without saying that you need a soprano of extraordinary ability to sing the role of Alaide, but you also need a strong singer who can also act and have sufficient personality of her own to lend to the role, and you need a director who can actually give them something to work with. You have all the necessary qualities in Edita Gruberova and Christof Loy. Having worked together in recent years on Donizetti's Roberto Devereux and Lucrezia Borgia to spectacular results, the prospect of them working together on Bellini's opera was to say the least mouthwatering, but not without a certain amount of trepidation as to whether they could pull it off again. Thankfully, after a few initial doubts, they did.

Loy's concept wasn't the clearest, but at least it wasn't one of the minimalist chairs and dinner jackets productions that he's been fond of recently. He could do that and make it work I suspect, but instead he aims for a fairly traditional period setting, with real costumes and backdrops and everything. There are a few quirks inevitably, most of them involving ropes. Is it because there's such a mournful pall of death hanging over the start of the opera? Isoletta concerned about the likelihood of her marriage tomorrow turning into a fiasco because of Arturo's love for 'la straniera'. Is Arturo's impossible situation likely to lead to him hanging himself? Or are the ropes representative of the townspeople, who are just puppets of the suspicious Osburgo? Or does it reflect their mood and their desire to string up the dark evil woman in their midst?

Whatever the purpose of the ropes, Loy nonetheless sets the mood well, contrasting the black mourning clothes and mysterious veil of the stranger with the wedding dress that Isoletta wears in preparation for her wedding. La Straniera's dramatic content turns on the question of whether we going to have a wedding or a wake, and that's well covered. Or a coronation. Bellini nearly gives the game away early on, Auturo having a vision of the mysterious woman wearing a crown and Loy has a little bit of fun by having Gruberova as Alaide walk on stage in the second act wearing her crown before realising that everyone is actually waiting for the bride and slipping off-stage again.

Setting the appropriate mood is one thing, but dramatic conviction is all important and Loy makes that work too. There's no standing around here. Every ounce of emotional charge to be found in the situation, in the score and in the singing is made to count. It's the singing which is paramount however and as in those previous cases of Loy working with Gruberova in the bel canto repertoire, every note and gesture is put in service of making what is a ludicrous plot actually feel like a matter of vast life-or-death importance.

There were a few early concerns over how long Edita Gruberova can continue to carry roles like this, but they too were soon completely banished. There were a few slight wobbles early on and her pitch wasn't quite there in her duet with Dario Schmunck, but when it came to delivering the coloratura in those frequent scenes of great emotional anguish, Gruberova was beyond reproach. I've heard the great Slovak soprano many times but never before live in the theatre, and her voice is simply remarkable. Without microphones and mixing involved, her voice just dominates everything with that distinct timbre that is clear and resonant. She not only carried the singing honours however, but - particularly in the hands of Christof Loy - her acting ability was just as impressive. From the moment she walks on the stage, she is carrying the weight of her character's background and status - regal and mournful - and expressing it in gesture and in every nuance of her vocal coloratura.  

La Straniera may to all intents and purposes be a one woman show, but the supporting elements built around the lead all need to be in place as well and the supporting cast were all very fine. Isoletta only appears at the beginning and the end of the work, but mezzo-soprano Veronica Simeoni ensured that her character's predicament contributed to the setting and made a strong impression. Dario Schmunck was a rather dishevelled-looking Arturo, but supplied all the fire that is necessary to charge the drama. Franco Vassallo's Valdeburgo was well received and rock solid, even if his diction wasn't always the clearest. Even with such reliable support, with Loy's strong dramatic focus and Fabio Luisi working it from the orchestra pit, it's still a challenge for anyone to make the ending of La Straniera work. An air of disbelief at the plot twists inevitably remains here, but just as much admiration for the attempt to carry it off. If Edita Gruberova can't quite do it then no-one can.

Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera

Giuseppe Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera

The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012

Fabio Luisi, David Alden, Sondra Radvanovsky, Kathleen Kim, Stephanie Blythe, Marcelo Alvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Keith Miller, David Crawford

The Met Live in HD, 8th December 2012

Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) is an opera of wild dynamism, marrying together scenes of jarring contrasts in a way that makes it difficult opera to stage dramatically and musically in any coherent or consistent way.  It certainly not an opera I've seen handled convincingly on the stage, but David Alden's production for the Metropolitan Opera, if it doesn't quite bring it all together, at least points towards a way that might work.  Not playing it entirely straight, not playing it up for laughs either, but playing it scene by scene the way Verdi wrote it.

Quite what Verdi's true intentions for the work were is of course open to speculation.  The work, originally entitled Gustavo III, based on the real-life historical assassination of King Gustav III at a Masked Ball in Sweden in 1792, was notoriously banned by the strict censorship laws of the period in revolutionary Risorgimento Italy, who were unhappy about the depiction of an assassination of a monarch, forcing Verdi to rewrite and rename the characters involved.  Even then, the changes applied to the new version, called Una Vendetta in Dominò, weren't enough to appease the censors in Naples, so a furious Verdi took the work to Rome where it was first performed with the setting changed to Boston in North America as Un Ballo in Maschera in 1859.  The work is now performed, as it is here at the Met, in its original Swedish setting, but clearly Verdi was forced or felt the need to make compromises to the work in order to avoid censorship even in Rome.

None of this however is likely to have had much of an impact on Verdi's choices for the musical scoring of the piece and, seeking to show off his range and work with musical arrangements and arias more along the lines of La Traviata than the more through compositional style that he was gradually moving towards, Un Ballo in Maschera consequently has some of the composer's most beautiful melodies, striking arrangements and dramatic situations.  Every dramatic situation is pushed to its emotional limits - whether it's the love of Gustavo for Amelia, the wife of his secretary, the friendship of Gustavo and Renato which is to fall apart on the discovery of the affair, or the hatred felt by the king's adversaries - all of it is characterised by Verdi with an extravagance of passion.

An extravagance of melody too which, accompanying the melodramatic developments of the plot's regal and historical intrigue, to say nothing of incidents involving gypsy fortune tellers, can lead the work to switch dramatically at a moment's notice between the most romantic of encounters to the deepest gloom, from declarations of love to dire threats of vengeance.  The key to presenting the work coherently - if it's at all possible - is to try to ensure that these moments don't jar, and with Fabio Luisi conducting the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera here, musically this was a much more fluent and consistent piece than it might otherwise have been, without there being any alteration or variation to the essential tone of the work.

Inevitably, any director is going to look for a consistency of style in the approach to the stage direction, but that's probably a mistake with this work.  It's not a mistake that David Alden makes.  I must admit, having seen Alden's fondly humorous day-glo productions of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel's Deidamia, I had a suspicion that Alden might settle for playing up the camp comic side of Un Ballo in Maschera - which is certainly there and probably a more convincing way of playing the work than attempting to do it completely straight if the Madrid Teatro Real production is anything to go by - but I was wrong.  Alden plays every single scene in accordance with the tone established by Verdi, light in some places, thunderingly dramatic and brooding in others, but always operating hand in hand with Fabio Luisi to ensure that this can be made to work musically and dramatically.

Where the staging has consistency of theme and a consideration for a meaningful context for the work however, was in Alden's typically stylish and stylised production designs, created here by set designer Paul Steinberg and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel.  Evoking a turn of the twentieth century setting that takes the work entirely out of its historical context (notwithstanding the personages reverting to their original Swedish names), the production had the appearance of a Hollywood Musical melodrama, as lavishly stylised as a Bette Davis melodrama, but consistent within its own worldview, and it worked splendidly on this level.  The set was a little overworked in places, with dramatic boxed-in angles and heavy Icarus symbolism in a prominent painting, but it clearly responded to the nature of the work, playing more to the sophistication that's there in the music than the often ludicrous libretto.  Alden however even found a way to incorporate this into the production with little eccentric touches - such as the eye-rolling madness of Count Horn, which is not a bad idea.

Similar consideration was given towards the singing and the dramatic performances of the cast assembled here, which was - as it needs to be - forceful and committed.  The combination of voices was also well judged, the Met bringing together a few Verdi specialists well-attuned to the Verdi line - Marcelo Álvarez (who I've seen singing the role of Gustavo/Riccardo before), Sondra Radvanovsky and lately, Dmitri Hvorostovsky - all of them strong singers in their own right, but clearly on the same page as far as the production was concerned.  A few regular Met all-rounders like Stephanie Blythe and Kathleen Kim also delivered strong performances in the lesser roles of Madame Arvidsson and Oscar that really contributed significantly to the overall dynamic.  This was strong casting that brought that much needed consistency to a delicately balanced work where one weak element could bring the whole thing down.

Alden and Luisi were clearly aware of this and played to the strengths of the charged writing for these characters.  Act II's duet between Álvarez and Radvanovsky was excellent, hitting all the right emotional buttons, each of the characters delving deeply to make something more of the characters than is there on the page of the libretto.  Hvorostovsky brought a rather more tormented intensity to Renato in his scenes with Radvanovsky's Amelia that seemed a little overwrought, but this paid off in how it made the highly charged final scene work.  Un Ballo in Maschera is still a problematic work, but with Luisi and Alden's considered approach and this kind of dramatic involvement from the singers, the qualities of the opera were given the best possible opportunity to shine.

Wagner - Götterdämmerung

Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung

Metropolitan Opera, New York 2012

Fabio Luisi, Robert Lepage, Deborah Voigt, Wendy Bryn Harmer, Waltraud Meier, Jay Hunter Morris, Iain Paterson, Eric Owens, Hans-Peter König, Erin Morley, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Tamara Mumford, Maria Radner, Elizabeth Bishop, Heidi Melton

The Met: Live in HD, Feb 11th 2012

The evolution of the Metropolitan Opera’s Ring cycle has been gradual but noticeable through each of the four parts spread across its 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons. Initially in the prologue, Das Rheingold, the spectacle of Robert Lepage’s Machine was clearly an impressive and revolutionary piece of stage technology, but its concept and purpose were not entirely proven. At the very least however, the opening section of the Met’s Ring cycle delighted with a stunning display of powerful singing. Neither the staging nor the singing were entirely consistent across Die Walküre nor Siegfried, but as James Levine’s illness forced him to gave way to Fabio Luisi on the conductor’s podium, a more equitable balance seemed to develop between the production and the performance that played to the strengths of Wagner’s masterwork, even if that meant a little less power in the vocal delivery. If Siegfried held out the promise that Lepage’s vision could end up being a memorable Ring production, that promise was satisfyingly achieved in its epic final evening. With Götterdämmerung, the Met’s Ring has come full circle.

Following on from Siegfried, Fabio Luisi again conducted a Wagner of Romantic sweep over the traditional heavy Germanic declamation, perhaps in favour of two leads who don’t have the full force that is usually demanded for the roles of Siegfried and Brünnhilde – Jay Hunter Morris and Deborah Voigt. The toning down of the dramatics and tone also worked fittingly with a subtlety in the stage design that belies the sheer weight and imposing presence of the Machine. Like Wagner’s score for Götterdämmerung, the underlying power of the tools at one’s disposal can be a temptation for overstatement, but it can be even more effective if that huge mass of force is suggested and used only sparingly. Clearly both Luisi and Lepage understand that. This is a Ring for the 2010s then, faithful to Wagner’s vision of the power of mythology and of the music drama as the highest expression of human artistic endeavour, taking it to a new level through the modern technology that is at the disposal of an imaginative director.

Lepage’s vision for the production didn’t appear to yield any grand conceptual theme other than how best to make Wagner’s daunting and problematic series of operas work in a modern context without all its accumulated history and tradition. Particularly in the earlier parts, the morphing planks and projections worked mainly on a literal basis to create the imposing presence of Valhalla, an impenetrable forest or a mountain cave housing a dragon, but as the cycle progressed, the emphasis shifted more towards the abstract conceptual. The polymorphous nature of the technology was still well-employed to give solidity to the physicality of the story – the riverside playground of the Rhinemaidens for example actually looking more realistic here than how it was projected during Das Rheingold – but the colours, lighting and abstract patterns elsewhere in Götterdämmerung seemed to be more attuned to mood.

It may seem like making excuses for slightly underpowered performances, but it was actually refreshing to find a Siegfried and a Brünnhilde playing not as mythical god-like figures, but as the human characters they essentially and necessarily are. No excuses however need to be made, even for the fact that both Jay Hunter Morris and Deborah Voigt were taking on enormous challenges way beyond anything they have ever done in their careers; on their own terms their performances were exceptionally good and fitting for the production. The chemistry that seemed to be there between them at the end of Siegfried didn’t extend however through to the first act of Götterdämmerung, both seeming a little overwhelmed, the lack of lower depth in both their voices even more noticeable when combined. Voigt however raised her game when paired with the formidable and experienced Wagernian mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier as Brünnhilde’s sister Valkyrie, Waltraude. Their sequence together was simply magnificent. For his part Morris won through from sheer determination and stamina in a severely testing role that demands a concentrated effort for six hours, but he also had a down-to-earth personality and charm that made the final scenes of the opera intimate and touching as well as being epically apocalyptic.

If there were any misgivings about the appropriate Wagnerian tenor of the main roles not quite matching the earlier powerhouse performances of the likes of Bryn Terfel, Stephanie Blythe, Eric Owens and Jonas Kaufmann, there was again magnificent support here not only from Waltraud Meier, but Wendy Bryn Harmer proved to be a fine Gutrune, Hans-Peter König a formidable Hagen – blankly sinister in acting, but deeply menacing in tone of voice – and there was another impressive turn from Eric Owens who made the brief reappearance of Alberich more than memorable, particularly as his character is a vital link (and leitmotif) that sustains the overarching development and tone of the entire work. Only Iain Paterson failed to make his presence felt either as Gunther, but his weak-willed character was at least dramatically appropriate and fitting, and certainly not a weak element.

I can’t say what the experience would have been like in the theatre, but there was no evidence during the HD-Live broadcast of any noise from the stage equipment, or indeed any of the problematic breakdowns that have been the cause of complaints in some quarters. Everything on the stage flowed smoothly and impressively. On the big screen, Götterdämmerung was as grandly spectacular and as intimately moving as it ought to be, perfectly attuned to the score and the performances. The camerawork – directed a strong visual flair as usual by Gary Halvorson – was also well-judged to pick out the strengths in the performances and the production design, working with it, flowing with the mood of the piece. Although there are a few Ring productions still to come this year and next (the Munich one in particular should be interesting), when eventually viewed together as a full Ring cycle (it will be interesting to see if the first two are revised slightly to suit Luisi’s approach to the work) I think the full impact and consistency of this Met Ring will be better appreciated and it may even be regarded as one of the best of recent times.