Braunfels - Die Vögel (Munich, 2020)

Walter Braunfels - Die Vögel (Munich, 2020)

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2020

Ingo Metzmacher, Frank Castorf, Wolfgang Koch, Charles Workman, Michael Nagy, Caroline Wettergreen, Günter Papendell, Bálint Szabó, Emily Pogorelc, Yajie Zhang, Eliza Boom, Theodore Platt, George Vîrban

Staatsoper TV - 31 October 2020

A previous production I saw of Walter Braunfel's Die Vögel for LA Opera in 2009 kept the work fairly neutral in a magical fairy-tale world, but whether you choose to relate the obvious parable in Aristophanes' tale to any contemporary situation or not, it most certainly has something to say about power, social division and inequality. Directed by Frank Castorf (Bayreuth Ring, From the House of the Dead), I think you could pretty much guess beforehand how this was going to be handled in the Bavarian State Opera production. Or broadly guess at least, since while all the more familiar Castorf imagery, symbolism and references are present, it is of course impossible to imagine all the unusual and strange details that the director will throw in.

There is at the very least a case for delving beneath the surface beauty of Braunfels' musical arrangements and trying to get to the root of what the composer might have wanted to say about the underlying themes in the fairy-tale. Braunfels was one of many German and Austrian composers who suffered under the hands of the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage, but his refusal to write an anthem for the Nazi party wouldn't have gone down well either and Braunfels found his music classified as Entartete ("Degenerate"). It's not difficult to see some concerns about the post-first world war divisions in society and where it might lead to in his 1920 opera Die Vögel (The Birds).

In Braunfels' version of the story by Aristophenes, the division is characterised between two men who both have idealistic names, Ratefreund (Loyal Friend) and Hoffegut (Good Hope), who set out to leave behind the world of men, to escape the confines of bourgeois society and culture, and aspire to artistic greatness. They turn to Hoopoe, the Emperor of the birds who was once human, and propose the building of a grand city in the skies, where the birds can reassert their dominion above humans and even the gods. Inevitably the ideal of such a utopia is weakened by the vanity of assuming such power, and Prometheus is there to warn them of where this is all going to lead.

Braunfels started writing Die Vögel before the First World War, and it's not difficult to imagine that the opera might reflect the concerns that the composer could have had about the changes in society during the period of the writing up to its completion in 1919. Castorf's production attempts to reflect those divisions and the human weaknesses that corrupt the idealism of a utopia in harmony with nature. Hoffegut's hope for emotional fulfilment turns into an obsession for the beauty of the nightingale, while Ratefreund's desire for power higher than Zeus leads both to effectively (in this production at least) become Nazis.

It's impossible not to think of Richard Strauss's lushly orchestrated fantasies Die Frau ohne Schatten or Daphne, both musically as well as in the fairy-tale subject matter of Die Vögel. Braunfels composes some ravishing but not particularly challenging music that is at least persuasive of the possibility of a utopia, with bird trills feeding into the score. The second half goes all-out with Hoffegut's wooing of the Nightingale, the long instrumental ballet music for the wedding between Mister Pigeon and Miss Dove, but it's all brought down to earth (literally) with the arrival of Prometheus, and Castorf is determined not to let the fantasy and musical extravagance overshadow the darker message. If anyone can make Die Vögel just that bit edgier it's undoubtedly Frank Castorf.

Inevitably when it comes to this director, it's very much hit and miss. Nothing is going to be presented literally or as a pure allegorical fantasy as in the LA Opera production, and the imagery and the symbolism don't correlate with underlying themes in any obvious way. What works and what doesn't will depend on your perspective, but there's certainly plenty to take in and work with in the set design. For Act I Alexander Denic provides a familiar Castorf 360 degree rotating three-level platform of makeshift rusting scaffolding, steel staircases and plastic sheeting with a wooden hut at the top. The ground floor likewise looks like a refugee camp with shipping containers, wooden fence and chairs.

As you also often find with Castorf there are handheld cameras projecting close-ups and backstage action up onto screens, the set also decorated with little details that reference consumerist society (a Coca-Cola dispenser) as well as more obscure references to the subject of birds in concert posters for The Eagles and one for The Byrds backed by The Flying Burrito Brothers. Running in a similar free-association way, Act II after the interval features a huge billboard of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, with clips from the film showing on an array of satellite dishes as the inevitable horror of this (capitalist?) citadel to man's vanity comes crashing down to earth.

Whether you can make anything clear out of Castorf's production, there's no shortage of ideas and it does look spectacular. The birds' costumes are beautifully extravagant like nightclub showgirls and dancers, with feathers in their hair and plumage on wire harnesses. The arrival of Prometheus amidst the cacophony of life, ideas, references, emotional and political conflict in Castorf's intentionally cluttered stage is extraordinary, capturing the beauty and the ugliness, the mundane and the mysterious, the whole glorious spectacle and the ignominious collapse of it all. Performed in an almost empty theatre, the premiere and final performance of this production before the National Theatre goes into lockdown, certainly lends a strange atmosphere to the piece, where culture is again at the mercy of social upheaval.

The casting and of course the musical performance under Ingo Metzmacher certainly helps contribute to emphasise the contrasts between the lush music and the on-stage furore. I always enjoy Charles Workman's singing and he's very good here as Hoffegut, bringing a suitable little bit of an edge to his usually soft lyrical tenor. It's rather hard for anyone else to be relatable on a human level either - for obvious reasons in this fantasy - but there are songbirds aplenty and excellent performances from Wolfgang Koch as Prometheus, Günter Papendell as Wiedhopf (Hoopoe), Michael Nagy as Ratefreund and Caroline Wettergreen as the Nightingale.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper TV

Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande (Berlin, 2017)

Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

Komische Oper, 2017

Jordan de Souza, Barrie Kosky, Jens Larsen, Nadine Weissmann, Dominik Köninger, Günter Papendell, Nadja Mchantaf

OperaVision - 15 October 2017

Proving that he has more than one trick up his sleeve, Barrie Kosky's production of Pelléas et Mélisande for the Komische Oper in Berlin glides along in a minimalist design production on a reduced stage with practically no props at all. Recognising that Pelléas et Mélisande tends to respond better to minimal intervention, Kosky is able even to remove all the familiar symbolism from the work and anything to do with nature, other than perhaps the most important aspect of it as far as this opera is concerned - human nature. But it's not all take, and Kosky has other ways of giving something else to the work that does succeed in bringing out its essential characteristics.

Primarily however, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing anyone can do that can bring anything more to Pelléas et Mélisande than Debussy's music, and the real success of this production lies in the ravishing performance that Jordan de Souza, the new Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin, brings out of the house orchestra. The shimmering beauty and flow of the work is all there, but that suggests hazy impressionism and actually there is beautiful clarity and detail brought out of individual instruments and groups of instruments here, as well as a fully expressed dynamic - particularly to the instrumental interludes - that occasionally made it feel like you were hearing passages for the first time.

Listening to the conductor talk about his approach to the work in the interval feature, it's clear that he has a profound understanding of the workings and merit of Debussy's score, but I think it also comes out that there is a strong collaboration with Barrie Kosky that ensures that there is a strong connection between the orchestra pit and what takes place on the stage. Kosky is able to reflect the dynamic in the musical performance on the stage, and the means by which he achieves that - within the context of a minimal set design - is very interesting indeed.

Kosky cites Edgar Allan Poe's blend of horror and eroticism as a reference for Pelléas et Mélisande and it's an unusual but valid comparison. Rather than head in the direction of gothic melodrama however, Kosky takes a much less obvious route to express those characteristics. The set throughout is nothing more than a recessed set of framing borders that reduce the stage down into a claustrophobic cave. The oppressiveness of the set becomes more apparent later in the work when there are more characters all crammed together at the back of the stage, where a revolving panel brings characters onto and off the stage.

Elsewhere, the characters enter and leave by gliding around on the revolving sections of the stage. They never seem to walk on or walk off, but once on the stage are able to move around a little more freely, except when they can't; which amounts to the kind of volition they have and control over their actions and lives at any given time. In terms of movement and position, everything is relational to the geometric patterns of the stage, and within that human nature in Pelléas et Mélisande is something of a chaotic element, even as it flows gracefully in time with Debussy's score.

It's in such subtle contrasts that Kosky seeks to bring out the gothic horror of Pelléas et Mélisande, but it's not entirely hands-off, and there are subtle shifts of emphasis that are applied. Some feel random and designed to do nothing more than jar with your impressions and preconceptions (such as Mélisande swallowing her ring rather than drop it into the Blind Man's Well); others however are perfectly acceptable interpretations of the suggestive and ambiguous undercurrents that lie within the work and which exert such fascination. Sometimes Kosky works with the moods and other times against them, just to see how the opera responds, and it does prove to be extraordinarily responsive to the slightest of touches and shading. Pelléas et Mélisande is that kind of work.

Despite conventional psychological exploration being largely replaced by suggestion and symbolism, there is actually a great deal of leeway in how these enigmatic characters can be interpreted and in how they interact. While it's often possible for Golaud to be the central figure of the work and even a sympathetic character, Kosky directs Günter Papendell towards a more aggressive Golaud in this production. He manhandles Mélisande quite brutally and kicks her when she is pregnant, soon after Arkel is seen creepily pawing over her. The suggestion is that Mélisande later miscarries in a bloody manner that is far from the quiet deathbed conclusion you usually find in this opera.

Golaud and Arkel's behaviour is contrasted with a Pelléas and Mélisande who play up to nature of their childlike games ('jeux d'enfants'), or at least initially. Whether that develops into something more erotically charged or whether that is a projection of Golaud's fevered mind is always an ambiguous matter, and it remains so here even as it is vividly depicted. The singing performances are outstanding, distinct and expressive, with a similar clarity and precision that can be found in the orchestration. When you hear the voices and music performed in this way, the miraculous unique quality of Debussy's approach to opera is all the more evident and impressive.

Links: Komische Oper, OperaVision

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin (Komische Berlin, 2016 - Webcast)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Komische Oper Berlin, 2016

Henrik Nánási, Barrie Kosky, Günter Papendell, Asmik Grigorian, Karolina Gumos, Aleš Briscein, Christiane Oertel, Alexey Antonov, Margarita Nekrasova, Yakov Strizhak, Christoph Späth

Opera Platform - 31 January 2016

Looked at it dispassionately the plot of Eugene Onegin is a slight one, but Tchaikovsky's beautiful opera is by no means a work to view dispassionately. Musically and lyrically its themes are much deeper and resonant and it's much more than a story of unrequited love, which is a commonplace episode that typically plays a small part in many of the great works of Russian literature (as does the obligatory duel scene). Even if Eugene Onegin holds this as the emotional core of the work, with the clever structural twist of the role of the unrequited lover being reversed later in the work and the whole thing even revolving around a duel centrepiece, the themes of the opera can be seen in a broader view to be just as much about time and perspective.

That also sounds like a rather 'dispassionate' way to view one of the most beautiful and lyrical works in Russian music and literature, and of course, its brilliance lies in Tchaikovsky's own very personal and sensitive response to the themes Pushkin explores in the work. Eugene Onegin is not as straightforward then as being a work about the innocence of youth that becomes older and wiser through experience, it's more about how time itself can transform feelings. Those feelings and the shared experience of Tatyana and Onegin during the time of their meeting on the Larin country estate and the tragic transform over time in unexpected ways, but at the heart there is a strong ring of truth to them.

The transformation that takes place in the intervening years is by no means a straightforward progression, and it would be a mistake to tie Eugene Onegin down to direct cause and effect. Tchaikovsky weaves many other elements and colourful scenes that are seemingly there to enliven the otherwise melancholic tone of torment and regret that dominates, as well as help fill out the thin plot of the opera, but all of them contribute to the greater themes of the work. Various aspects and thematic connections can be drawn out just as much from Lensky and Olga, as well as nurse Filippyevna's account of her arranged marriage at the age of thirteen that deepened into something warm and loving over time.

The place of men and women in society, the pressures to conform to social expectations as well as romantic ideals; all of these issues contribute to a minor incident that is nonetheless of vast significance to Tatyana and later Onegin - even if the relative importance of what it means tragically never coincides within both of them at the same time. "Happiness was once so near, so near!". There is something inherently and vitally Russian about that, something that is at the same time both passionate in the exploration and expression of one's deeper nature, yet also dispassionate in its abandonment to fate and the course it will set them upon. This idea of huge forces being set into motion by an outwardly minor matter is something that must be captured in any successful stage presentation of the work.

In line with the nature of the work itself, there are many ways to balance and blend those themes. It can be as simple and austere as Robert Carson's production, letting the light and the music express everything that isn't brought out on the surface, or you can throw everything up there on the stage in an all-encompassing Stefan Herheim manner and let the music hold the true course of the sentiments. With Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper in Berlin it could go either way, but you can at least be sure that it is probably going to be colourful and elaborate. That certainly is the impression you get at the start of Act I, where a whole hyper-realistic chunk of the Russian countryside appears to be deposited right up there on the stage.

This is not however the kind of kitsch forest scene that you will find for example in Otto Schenk's The Cunning Little Vixen. It's not that Kosky is adverse to a bit of kitsch and camp when it's appropriate, but in the case of Eugene Onegin the set serves that deeper purpose of the work. The single forest scene, the lump of Russian countryside that remains in place throughout most of the opera, reflects the importance of the location and of nature in the work. Without getting too bogged down in period detail, which isn't as important as the broader themes, it does however also suggest memories of the past - on how the golden days of youth are reflected upon in moments of crisis. Even when we are in a ballroom in the final scene of the opera, the rough grass that serves as a carpet remains there as a reminder that the past never leaves us.

Kosky of course pays just as much attention to the human drama as the broader Russian themes of the work and its considerations in regards to time and memory. The human emotions are not so much conflated with or inflated by their proximity to the Russian landscape, as much as given the vast space they need to be fully expressed. Tchaikovsky's High Romanticism isn't the same as Debussy's Expressionism, but a stage production is capable of highlighting these human sentiments in terms of light, mood and nature. Kosky's production uses shadow and light, uses the trees, sunlight and moonlight not so much to heighten drama, as much as connect human feelings with nature; relating those features to the surge of excitement, anxiety, melancholy that Tchaikovsky pours into the melodies of the score.

Playing to the human sentiments, the actions and behaviour of each and every one of the characters touches on the essence of their nature in a way that, for example, Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw did not in their Met production when the inner truth of the work was betrayed for the sake of stage drama. The casting helps here, the Komische's production benefitting from a relatively young cast who prove to be quite capable of the dramatic and the singing challenges that the work presents. All of them are tested in passages, but the lyrical beauty of the singing and what it reveals about the characters is handled wonderfully. The Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian in particular is rivetting as Tatjana, her singing and the emotional force behind it impressive; Günter Papendell is a less brusque and a softer Onegin than you usually find, but it works well with the reading here.

There are no major deviations in this production away from the familiar trajectory of the plot and characterisation, but Kosky introduces little revealing touches that present an alternative or more ambiguous way of looking at the situation. Here, for example, you can feel some sympathy for Onegin, not disdain for his arrogance and aloofness. More so than Tatyana, he's the one who comes across as naive in believing he knows it all when he rejects her written declaration of love. Even Tatyana, in their final scene together, recognises that Onegin behaved honourably towards her and didn't take advantage of a young vulnerable country girl. The handling of the duel is also important and Kosky's choice to keep it off-stage works well. Onegin's horror for what has occurred is directed straight afterwards towards Tatyana who has turns up on the scene, making the kind of impact that is necessary for what follows.

What follows of course isn't just a matter of role-reversal. The past still has a hold over Tatyana, who is not indifferent to Onegin, but time has separated them in a way that is impossible to recover. Kosky's production and the direction of the performances captures this with all the ambiguity of feeling that the desperate struggle of the final scene requires. Most productions at the Komische are in German language, I believe, but the decision to keep Yevgeniy Onegin in Russian (even Monsieur Triquet's song is in Russian, which I think is the first time I've heard it sung in anything but French) is an essential element in keeping the whole production as authentic as possible. The fine performance of the orchestra under the Henrik Nánási is another vital component that the Komische seem to get perfectly right, with the chorus also meeting every expectation.


Links: Opera Platform, Komische Oper

Monteverdi - Orpheus/Odysseus/Poppea (Komische Berlin, 2014 - Blu-ray)

Claudio Monteverdi - Orpheus/Odysseus/Poppea

Komische Oper, Berlin - 2014

André de Ridder, Barrie Kosky, Dominik Köninger, Julia Novikova, Peter Renz, Günter Papendell, Ezgi Kutlu, Tansel Akzeybek, Brigitte Geller, Roger Smeets, Helene Schneiderman

Arthaus Musk - Blu-ray

Barrie Kosky's work is becoming more widely known in the UK from colourful, fresh and not entirely controversy-free productions of mainly Baroque opera at the ENO (Rameau's Castor and Pollux), Glyndebourne (Handel's Saul) and Edinburgh (Mozart's The Magic Flute), but the Australian director is also the artistic director at the Komische Oper in Berlin, the city's German language opera company. You can expect then that his Monteverdi Trilogy (L'Orfeo, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria and L'Incoronazione di Poppea the composer's only existing complete operas) is going to be very different from any other versions of some of opera's earliest and greatest compositions. You don't know the half of it...

It's the Komische, so even Monteverdi is subjected to the German language treatment. That might sound strange to the ears were the works performed in an historically-informed way on period instruments, but remarkably the musical interpretation is just as "translated" here. While the melodic line and continuo is followed in as far as Monteverdi variously scored it for these works with theorbo and bass viol, Elena Kats-Chemin has introduced new instrumentation for all three works, including an accordion, a banjo and an electric guitar as well as a range of exotic instruments like the djoza from Iran, a West African kora (bridge-harp) and a Syrian oud (lute).

The familiar melodies and rhythmic structure is there, but less rigidly adhered to, blending into a much richer texture of plucked and hammered sounds that actually give a real kick to the arrangements. It's not just the colour of the instruments that is used either, but the melody can stray into a tango, into German jazz, Slavic folk, klezmer or ragtime swing. It might sound outrageous, but it gets across the wide dynamic of the tones within and across these works and is always appropriate to the context. What is also fascinating is hearing those instruments play baroque music and discovering the connections the various styles have with one another. It's as if they can all be ultimately traced back to Monteverdi, and I suppose in a way they can.

Needless to say, Barrie Kosky revels in the opportunities to match the colour and playful nature of the music with vividly bright, colourful productions that are inventive in situation on a busy stage that is usually a riot of dance and movement. Musically and in terms of staging, reflecting the director's concept of the loss and ultimate destruction of the Arcadian ideal across the three works, the trilogy is at its most elaborate in Orpheus (L'Orfeo). This would be appropriate for a work that spans such a wide range of human experiences and emotions, from joyful celebration to mournful despair and the determination of Orpheus not to be defeated by the cruel war constantly waged between the Gods subjecting mankind to the whims of Time, Love, Fate and Chance.

Kosky's production then strongly marks the contrast between Paradise and Hell, illustrating the endeavours of Orpheus and the power of human art and ingenuity to celebrate love and beauty in the face of outrageous fortune. The stage is filled with movement, with dancers and life-size puppets, but it works in a complementary way with the nature of the subject and with the unconventional musical interpretation conducted here by André de Ridder. As the most adventurous of the three stagings, it works marvellously, allowing the German language performance to fit in well with the celebration of life in all its richness and colour. The singing performances by Dominik Köninger as Orpheus, Julia Novikova as Eurydice and Peter Renz as Amor, no doubt help make that work as well with the sheer lyrical beauty of the voices.

The rather more austere staging for Odysseus (Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria) doesn't significantly alter the impact that is achieved by the richness of the work itself. Accordingly, the music has the same kind of musical reinterpretation but with a different colour from that of Orpheus. Turkish melodies and rhythms infuse Poppea's lament and other imaginative musical flourishes on a grand piano are inserted in those Monteverdean short bursts of melody in the middle of recitative. The scene of the three suitors characterises their claims with a tango rhythm or a burst of a Habanera. Again without destroying the composer's structure, this is very much in the spirit of improvisation and interpretation that are a vital element to the make-up of Monteverdi's operas, the singing voices taking up the main expression of emotions. Ezgi Kutlu in particular impresses here as Poppea, but Günter Papendell's Odysseus and Tansel Akzeybek's Telemachus are also very strong.

In terms of the advancing the concept of the staging, one of the main factors that establishes the tone of the work is of course the Prelude. In Odysseus, Time, Fortune and Love make fools of the activities of men and the purpose of Odysseus. The expedition to Troy and the war that ensued has led to Odysseus blown off course for 20 years. Arcadia has been lost, Odysseus is wandering, longing for a return to peace in his homeland, with his family and loved ones, and it is also causing Penelope great torment. The 'patria' here then is nothing more then than the green, green grass of home, a mostly bare platform with the orchestra behind the performers. The period is kind of late-60s/early-70s, the suitors looking particularly sleazy as if they've just spilled out of a bar hoping to pick up a wealthy widow, but the tone at the same time colourfully evokes nostalgia for old-fashioned ways.

The set is also minimally dressed for Poppea (L'Incoronazione di Poppea), but this is more than compensated for by the colour, movement and stage directions that extend out beyond the orchestra pit on a wide platform. Disappointingly however, having got quite used to it in the other two works, the musical reinterpretation is less evident here, despite L'incoronazione di Poppea being a work that has a wide range of emotional colour and variety of situation. A little bit of electric guitar makes fitful appearances, and banjos are used to bring a little more of an edge to the basso continuo. Somehow however, despite the fact that great care has been take to establish a distinct sound world to each of the works, it isn't until quite late in the piece that the instrumentation finds the kind of rhythmic pulse that should drive the work.

Barrie Kosky however is not short of ways to use the singers, dancers and supernumerary sprites to push the expressions of all the violent and lustful passions in Poppea into the movement and exhibition of the body. There is a considerable amount of full-frontal nudity here, mostly male, none of which is the least bit erotic. Amor - a vital character to all three works (sung in each by Peter Renz) - is a constant presence here, but again taking its lead from the prelude, Love might be dominant, but Virtue has been defeated and Arcadia destroyed. Poppea takes place consequently on the side of a volcano, grey, with large boulders littering the landscape. The contrast between Nero and Poppea's violent love and the monstrousness of their actions towards others is depicted in all its horror, and matched by the intense singing. All of the performers are simply outstanding here, but I particularly liked Helene Schneiderman's unrepentantly vengeful Octavia.

The quality of the visual aspect of each of the Blu-ray discs is fine, but there is a little bit of haziness to the image with some minor blurring in movement that is not as clinically sharp as most HD releases. On Orpheus and Odysseus, there is a kind of yellowish tint with gives a warmer tone. These characteristics are less evident on Poppea, which also seems sharper. The singing sounds a little amplified which might be down to the use of radio mics, although they are not obviously worn by the performers, and the mixing is not quite as bright as you might find on recordings of baroque music. It's warmly toned if you like, and comes over well on the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and PCM stereo mixes, but best of all on headphones. Subtitles are in German, English, French and Turkish. There are no extra feaures on the discs, but there are synopses and a great deal of information on the production in the large booklet that comes with the box set.