Wagner - Parsifal (Vienna, 2017)

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017

Semyon Bychkov, Alvis Hermanis, Christopher Ventris, Nina Stemme, Kwangchul Youn, Gerald Finley, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Jongmin Park

Staatsoper Live - 13th April 2017

First impressions count for a lot in a production of Parsifal. A full two thirds of the long, slow-moving work is going to take place in the single location of Monsalvat, a place that according to the demands of the work must lie outside of space and time, so it's important to get it right. All the more so in the case of the 2017 Vienna production of Parsifal, which sets all three acts in the same location. The choice of a hospital by director Alvis Hermanis however manages not only to make a strong impression, but it also gives the viewer a new way of looking at a complex and ever-intriguing work.

It's inevitable that the ideas and the philosophy behind Wagner's works must continue to be challenged as they are subjected to the gaze of a more modern outlook and sensibility. Every new production of Parsifal must necessarily provoke the audience to consider its message anew each time. Despite its basis in Christian beliefs and religious rituals relating to original sin, suffering, Good Friday death and rebirth into an afterlife, and for all the difficulty of pinning it down to any one meaning (which you would think must necessarily remain elusive) Wagner's final work is nonetheless the one that has best endured changes in modern thinking and touches more deeply on fundamental aspects of the human condition.

If there is one overriding sentiment in Parsifal however it's suffering and, to undoubtedly over-simplify its message, it's through compassion for others that we can find the path to enlightenment and redemption. There are of course many other angles from which to approach the work, but this central Schopenhaurian aspect of the work is hard to ignore and everything else that is contained within the work - including its mysteries and contradictions - must be made to fit around and work within this central theme. Alvis Hermanis's production takes that challenge head-on, seeking to illuminate and enlighten, and sometimes that means that it appears to be in direct contradiction to what Wagner proposes.

Leaving aside the rather unnecessary and unappealing labelling of Monsalvat as a 'Wagner Spital', the residence of the Knights of the Holy Grail in this production is indeed a hospital. As I say, first impressions count, and in a stroke Hermanis sidesteps those other aspects of Parsifal that are questionable or at least more difficult to relate to a modern outlook on its central theme. Replacing a temple with a hospital, Hermanis excises any notion of religious observance, ritual or conflicting faith beliefs, and instead chooses to see the worship of the Holy Grail as a belief in the supremacy of science, learning and rational thought over superstition and blind faith.

That's not a new direction for a director who brought updated scientific views and even introduced a Dr Stephen Hawking figure into his Paris production of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust. The period chosen for the 'Wagner Spital' however is an interesting and distinctive one, the director choosing to set the Vienna production in Vienna, but significantly during the turn of the 20th century Vienna of Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis. The acolytes, squires, knights are dressed here as patients, doctors and bow-tied bewhiskered professors, and the Holy Grail they worship is... a glowing brain.

A hospital is certainly an acceptable place (at least it's not an asylum) to examine questions of human suffering and compassion, even if it's doubtful that a strictly physiological approach really accords with Wagner's philosophy. But just as it is unwise to attempt to pin down Parsifal to one reading, it's also dangerous to assume that Hermanis is taking such a literal view. Parsifal, in any case, wouldn't permit such an imposition, so perhaps it's safer to see Hermanis's Vienna production as one that 'tests' Parsifal, throws psychoanalysis and psychology at it and sees if it (and Wagner who is just as much being analysed here) can withstand the scrutiny of more 'modern' scientific thought. That's certainly a worthwhile endeavour, and unsurprisingly Parsifal endures.

Setting the work in turn of the 20th century Vienna at least pushes focus onto another interesting and sometimes controversial aspect of Parsifal, and that's the treatment of women in the work. There's much that can be made of a Freudian analysis of the role that Kundry and the Flowermaidens play in the opera. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the doctors and students of the 'Wagner Spital' are mistrustful of the primal and hysterical personality traits of Kundry, who has clearly suffered trauma and abuse, and they keep her locked in a caged bed-cot. The openly sexual advances of the Flowermaidens too with their sensual allure - all bloomers and corsets here on hospital trolley-beds -  are not to be trusted either, threatening to distract Parsifal away from his true purpose of self-realisation. Parsifal is even constrained by the memory of his dead mother, seeing in Kundry a means of returning to being a baby safe under her protection.

If that is how women are broadly viewed or simplistically categorised in Parsifal, Hermanis's production allows for a wider and more sympathetic reading without entirely undoing the Wagnerian viewpoint. Act I would appear to challenge Wagner's philosophy (or the overly strict philosophy of the Knights) by giving science a biological or physiological imperative over their faith, but Act II does seem to admit that the mind is subject to an immaterial or spiritual dimension. The brain-grail in Act I is matched by another larger brain that is pierced with the Holy Spear in Act II, which is another symbol open to interpretation. In denying the lure of the Flowermaidens and Kundry, Parsifal is however able to remove the spear, the negation of the will permitting the human mind the ability to overcome the limitations of the physical.

It's perhaps this knowledge of the dualism of the mind and the body (and the suffering that comes with it) that the scientists of the Grail need to accept, and it's the symbolism of the spear being removed from the brain by Parsifal that points to the need for acceptance of their duality. The defeating of Klingsor in Act II, a mad scientist who uses reanimating electro-shock treatment on Kundry, also points towards another way of looking at the resolution of the questions raised by Parsifal. Parsifal's act of kindness and compassion towards the tormented woman in Act III indicates that a little kindness goes a long way, and maybe that's all we need to learn from Wagner's masterpiece. Well, maybe not all, but if all the philosophical viewpoints and symbolism don't entirely hold together in Alvis Hermanis's production, it nonetheless engages with the same contradictions, contrasts and conundrums that are there in Wagner's opera.

In terms of finding a sympathetic performance to match a thoughtful production, you could hardly ask for more than the one conducted by Semyon Bychkov. There might not have been anything too ambitious attempted in interpretation - a compressed live internet streaming audio mix is hardly the place to judge that in any case - and a few notes going awry here and there scarcely mattered; this was a warm and sensitive account of the score. The singing too was simply outstanding, all A-list Wagnerian performers with experience in these roles. The bass and baritone roles impressed me most, Kwangchul Youn's Gurnemanz and Gerald Finley's Amfortas both impeccable in delivery with beautiful clear enunciation. Christopher Ventris remained a bright and lyrical Parsifal throughout despite the challenges of the role, and Nina Stemme gave an understated but touching account of Kundry.

The overall impression might be that Alvis Hermanis presents Vienna with a rather cool and analytical Parsifal that perhaps doesn't offer any new insights, but with a striking set design, a meaningful conceptual approach and first-rate performances, it's nonetheless an impressive production that engages with many of the complex themes of Wagner's final masterpiece.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live

Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier (Vienna, 2015 - Webcast)

Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier

Wiener Staatsoper, 2015

Adam Fischer, Otto Schenk, Martina Serafin, Wolfgang Bankl, Elīna Garanča, Erin Morley, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Caroline Wenborne, Thomas Ebenstein, Ulrike Helzel

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 12 April 2015
 
There are some things to be said for Otto Schenk's old, traditional, somewhat stuffy, period realistic production of Der Rosenkavalier. Not much admittedly, and it's perhaps unintentional, but Act I at least fully indulges Strauss and Hofmannsthal's qualified nostalgia for an idealised Vienna of the past, a way of life that is on the point of change and never to be regained. And since this production is being played in Vienna itself, that is likely to hold some measure of recognition with the home audience. So it's not a stylised Vienna either, but one that looks and realistically reflects how things might indeed have looked and, to an extent, operated in the olden days.

The Vienna seen in Act I of Der Rosenkavalier, in the bed chamber of the Feldmarschallin, is one where the privilege of nobility permits all manner of abuses. These are presented in a saucy farcical manner by Strauss and Hoffmannsthal - with reference evidently to the music and operetta of the time - but there is a little bit of an edge here that shows attitudes, morals, social gatherings, behaviours and manners that are rather hidebound and out of step with the world we live in today. It's a world that is already starting to change with the arrival of the merchant class of nouveaux riches, seen in the second act. Unintentionally then, Otto Schenk's frumpy, old-fashioned set does reflect a world clinging to a past that is in conflict with social changes.

Particularly in its attitudes towards women. Octavian, a young boy sung by a mezzo-soprano in a trouser role who is to be our optimistic hope for a new future, dresses as a maid in Act I and soon finds out what it's like to be on the receiving end of male attentions. The behaviour of Baron Ochs towards Mariandel is not surprising however, nor are the allusions to servants bearing illegitimate offspring of the nobility without those children having the same rights and privileges, but it's mostly played for laughs in the opera. What makes Der Rosenkavalier a little more pertinent however, is the attitute and contemplation of the situation of the Marschallin. 

Marschallin has enjoyed the privilege of having a prominent position in nobility, but she - "ordered into wedlock straight from the convent" - has never enjoyed the same kind of freedom that men of rank and position hold. Baron Ochs can chase her "maid" around the room, probably "get the money and the young girl" from a rich family that he is engaged to and boast of there being probably more than one other little bastard Lerchenau in the servant's quarters that he doesn't even know about. Marschallin however, as a woman, has to be very careful to hide her illicit although perhaps not entirely guilt-free (abusing her position as a wealthy and beautiful woman?) affair with her young cousin Octavian. "That's the way of the world".

But the Marschallin's contemplative melancholy goes beyond the inequalities in how the sexual behaviour of men and women is perceived. She also feels "the fragility of all temporal things" as only a woman can, and knows time is more cruel to women than to men. But more than just fearing the approach of old age and the diminishment of her charms, there's an awareness - its implications perhaps not entirely grasped - that the times are changing too. "Don't be like all other men!", she warns Octavian, even as she has the premonition that their time together is approaching an end, and that society will leave her kind behind just as Octavian will, sooner or later, leave her for Sophie. He must take advantage of these new opportunities and offer Sophie, and women as a whole, a different world from the one she has known.

All this is laid out in Act I, and there's not much Otto Schenk's production can do to take away from the beauty of what Strauss and Hofmannsthal have created here. It's a scene that carries resonance all the way through the longeurs of Act II and particularly Act III, right up until the moment that the Marschallin reappears and brings all the lovely melancholy of time and change with her once again. The production however has nothing much to contribute to any of this, Act II at the residence of the Faninals scarcely looking any brighter or more modern than Act I, Act III's dark interior of the inn looking exactly as you might expect a den of iniquity to appear, played plainly as a farce without any of the work's satirical tone.

The production values however are high, as you might expect, Octavian in particular cutting a fine figure against this backdrop in his period costume and wig. That's Elīna Garanča, looking terrific if not in the least bit manly, singing the role beautfully. She sings one of the best Octavians I've heard recently, but her movements, performance and delivery are a little stiff, not really seeming to engage with the production or as well with the other characters as you might like. And yet, the performances of each of the other singers Octavian plays off is also outstanding in his or her role. Martina Serafin is a perfect Marschallin, Wolfgang Bankl a well-characterised Ochs auf Lerchenau, but it's Erin Morley's Sophie who really gives the production that freshness and vitality that is unfortunately lacking elsewhere.

Der Rosenkavalier was broadcast from the Vienna State Opera as part of their Live at Home programme. The next broadcast is L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI on the 30th April. May sees Juan Diego Flórez in DON PASQUALE, Plácido Domingo in NABUCCO and the beginning of Sven-Eric Bechtolf's production of DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, conducted by Simon Rattle. Details of how to view these productions live at home can be found in the links below.


Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Opéra Bastille - Paris 2014)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Opéra National de Paris, 2014

Philippe Jordan, Peter Sellars, Bill Viola, Robert Dean Smith, Franz Josef Selig, Violeta Urmana, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Janina Baechle, Raimund Nolte, Pavol Breslik, Piotr Kumon

Opéra Bastille, Paris - 8 April 2014

First produced in 2005, Peter Sellars and Bill Viola's controversial production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is characteristic of the approach that Gérard Mortier was keen to introduce during his tenure as director of the Opéra National de Paris. With the death of Mortier earlier this year, this scheduled première of the 2014 revival of Tristan und Isolde - marked with a minute's silence before the performance - turned out to be a powerful reminder of why Mortier was such an important a figure in the world of opera. His sense of adventure in his efforts to bring opera up to date and make it relevant to a new modern audience will be greatly missed.

Initially thought impossible to perform, Tristan und Isolde remains one of the most challenging works in the entire opera repertoire. Consequently, it demands a challenging response from any director and it should also still challenge an audience. Lacking much in the way of conventional drama, with long passages of obscure monologues and imagery influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Eastern mysticism, Tristan und Isolde is less of a traditional opera than a vast symphonic poem that stretches the limits of an orchestra and singers, as well as the endurance of the audience. Mortier recognised that when he looked beyond the opera world for talent in the art world capable of thinking beyond the confines of traditional opera staging, employing experimental theatre companies (La Fura dels Baus), arthouse film directors (Michael Haneke), and modern artists like video installation artist Bill Viola.

Pairing Viola with Peter Sellars - a more experienced opera director with a very definite tendency to produce experimental visions of familiar works - is one of the most inspired collaborations instigated by Mortier. Engaging a visual artist, a modern artist working in a very new medium, to respond to the extraordinary music and philosophy of Richard Wagner is likely to lead to a very creative and unique vision for the work. Whether they manage to delve into and illuminate those mysteries inherent in the work, or whether the video projections merely illustrate them and give them a visual form, Bill Viola's vision of Tristan und Isolde is nonetheless a distinctive and individualistic response to a monumental piece of music-drama.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, considering where his own areas of interest and those of Wagner coincide, Viola's imagery focuses very much on the contrasts and opposing imagery that is evoked by the two lovers throughout. Light and dark, fire and water, day and night, life and death - these divisions characterise the nature of the love of Tristan und Isolde (divisions that can only be resolved in the fusion of love and death), and they form the basis of Viola's slow-motion long-take video projections. It's a work of extremes, and those extremes are visualised in scenes featuring water in a number of forms (from seas and pools down to basins and jugs of water) and in scenes of fire (from blazing infernos down to rows of little flames on an array of candles).

The imagery is however is a little more complex than the use of extreme states would suggest. There are figures in nearly every scene, and the imagery must be seen to be relating to them. It makes sense that water would feature heavily in the sea passage of Act I where Isolde is being conveyed by Tristan to be the wife of King Marke of Cornwall, and it's duly represented in footage of raging seas and crashing waves. It's also a liquid, a magic potion that transforms or reveals the true nature of the feelings between the Irish Princess her captor. Viola's videos depict a surrogate Tristan and Isolde undergoing a kind of purification, stripped of their garments and inhibitions, plunged into basins, emerging out of pools, showered by attendants with jugs of water.

Act II, the secret encounter of Tristan und Isolde and their discovery by King Marke and Merlot, is by contrast land-based and Viola's approach is a little more abstract. The same two figures still feature prominently and interact with the imagery, but here they are exposed to the fire of passion. That might sound a little clichéd, but there's little that is obvious in the video installations which shows torches in woods, a slow dawning sunrise, the figure of the man approaching and wading through a blazing fire, the woman lighting small tea candles one by one. This is love as an exploration beyond the boundaries of the self, but still at this stage self-contained. Act III's resolution of course pushes those extremes even further and attempts to reconcile them through death or transcendence, and Viola's hypnotic imagery likewise supports the musical epiphany of Wagner's extraordinary music.

Arguably there's still something of a disconnect between the video and the stage, or at least an unfavourable imbalance. One would think that the singers on the stage should be the principal focus for the personification of the characters, but that's not physically possible of course. Expecting seasoned opera singers to be involved in such physical challenges as pacing through blazing fires, plunging in slow motion into and out of water is clearly out of the question, particularly when the singers have more than enough to deal with simply singing the roles. With the playing out of whatever drama there is taking place on screens, this does actually benefit the singers in that it leaves them free to focus on the expression required by these demanding roles.

That's not to say that the singers are necessarily detached from the dramatic playing. It's certainly very much simplified, the stage black, with nothing but a square low platform to lie upon occasionally. Neither Robert Dean Smith nor Violeta Urmana are great actors, but they don't need to be here; the music and the imagery should convey much of what they are singing. It doesn't stop them from trying though. They are opera singers after all and have experience singing these roles, so it's inevitable that they are going to bring some of their own experience to how the passions are expressed. Viola's imagery however at least takes some of the pressure off trying to push to those near-impossible extremes at the edges of human passion.

There's little evidence then of the input of Peter Sellars and perhaps less need for it in this production, but telling little details count. Marke and Merlot, for example, show up early on one or two occasions in Act II, witnessing the lovers in flagrante, but such is the swirl of passions, visualised on the screens and equally hypnotising the viewer, that Tristan and Isolde are entirely oblivious to the presence of anyone else. Just so we are aware that there is an outside world out there, Sellars also extends the drama occasionally out into the theatre, with choruses exploding from left, right and to the back of the amphitheatre, with the Young Seaman echoing off-stage or from one of the Bastille's theatre boxes. It's a surround-sound experience, enhanced all the more by an extraordinarily beautiful account of the work by the orchestra under Philippe Jordan. It has a sweepingly romantic force, pushing those extremes, yet mindful of the little details and of the need to bring them together.

I've seen Robert Dean Smith sing Tristan a few times now, and he just keeps getting better. He's not the most charismatic Tristan and he doesn't have much to offer in the way of acting, falling back on his own routine, but my admiration goes out to anyone who can sing Act III Tristan as well as Smith does here. Violeta Urmana is not always the most consistent singing Verdi and her high end can be a little strained, but it does seem Wagner might be more the forte for her formerly mezzo-soprano voice. There are still a few high notes that don't come out terribly pleasantly, but she sailed through the Liebestod and demonstrated some beautiful phrasing elsewhere. Overall we had good strong singers as Tristan and Isolde here.

We also had a superb King Marke in Franz-Josef Selig. His singing and phrasing were extraordinarily good, truly anguished in his betrayal by Tristan but dignified in his grief. Janina Baechle likewise was a solid and reliable Brangäne, attentive to the moods and the drama with a clear enunciation and expression. Jochen Schmeckenbecher buckled a little in one or two places but was nonetheless a strong and at times impressive Kurwenal. It was a surprise to see Pavol Breslik stand in as a last-minute replacement for the smaller parts of the Shepherd and Young Seaman, but he took this small step into the Wagnerian repertoire well, albeit mostly off-stage, with a forceful and lyrical delivery.

When you have as strong a cast as this, with a production based around Bill Viola's visuals, Peter Sellars' direction and Jordan's handling of the orchestra, it's a powerful reminder of how challenging and ground-breaking a work Tristan und Isolde still is. It's surprising however that, judging by the booing of Viola at the curtain call by a small minority of people, some supposedly intelligent Paris opera goers can't recognise a corresponding challenging, ground-breaking or at least sincere effort to respond to Wagner's intentions. Clearly, we're going to miss Gérard Mortier more than we thought.

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Opéra de Lyon

Kirill Petrenko, Àlex Ollé, La Fura dels Baus, Clifton Forbis, Ann Petersen, Christof Fischesser, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Nabil Suliman, Stella Grigorian, Viktor Antipenko, Laurent Labardesque

Lyon, France - June 22, 2011

As someone who is not entirely convinced by the opera productions of the experimental Catalan theatrical group La Fura dels Baus – which in my experience tend to strive towards spectacle and concept (usually a rather ridiculous one) over fittingness, let alone fidelity, to an opera – I was a little concerned that Àlex Ollé’s talk of taking a symbolic view of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for this new production at the Opéra de Lyon since “a descriptive or figurative staging would make no sense”.  It’s true that the themes of the opera are internalised and conceptual in nature, but the idea of two of opera’s most famous lovers hanging suspended from wires -as is often the case in La Fura dels Baus productions - floating above the mundane reality below, was a worrying prospect. Surprisingly then, particularly since the rather minimalist stage directions for Tristan und Isolde allows for some extreme interpretations, it turned out this particular production is surprisingly restrained and almost traditional, saving its spectacle effectively for those moments where the romantic nature of the opera really merits those special effects.

Tristan und Isolde is indeed rather straightforward and single minded in the purity of its romantic notion of love, but that doesn’t mean that the opera is in any way rational or easily defined. It’s littered with a richness of symbolism, conceptual imagery and contradictory elements relating to day and night, light and dark, to questions of time and distance, to life and death, all of which simultaneously define the nature of love while at the same time acknowledging its contradictions, its indefinability and its irrationality. Any attempt to take in all these allusions would result in a cluttered concept (it’s to Wagner’s credit and genius that this isn’t the case with the opera itself, propelled as it is by its own inner musical force and coherence), and, in my experience, it wouldn’t be beyond La Fura to attempt to do just that, and add a few of their own half-baked concepts as well. Instead, and to my pleasant surprise, Àlex Ollé focusses, as you must, on one aspect of the opera and builts the concept around that. In this case, it is the romantic tug and persuasion of the moon, whose gravitational force affects not only the tides, but is believed by many to affect human moods, behaviours and irrationality in people, as well as hold an irresistible romantic presence.

Act 1 then makes use of a basic platform to represent the deck of the ship which is transporting Isolde from Ireland to Cornwall where she will be married to King Marke, with computer generated projections of the rolling sea on a screen behind. The platform revolves 360°, very slowly in one turn over the course of the First Act, while the moon appears as a blurred but bright sphere that solidifies in clarity as the nature of the relationship between Isolde and Tristan itself becomes clear. Superbly realised by the mood, the staging and the lighting, the emotional turmoil that each of them go through up to the moment of this realisation is reflected also in the motion of the waves, stormy at first, crashing against each other, until the moment of utter calm and abandonment arrives when they give themselves up to an expected death that does not come, but instead frees them of their inhibitions.

The moon becomes a concave sphere in Act 2 that stands for King Marke’s Cornwall, within which Tristan and Isolde’s love is trapped, as if within its own bubble. The contrast of darkness and light – the omnipresent imagery within the libretto for the Second Act – is reflected in the lighting and shifting shadows of trees that weave complex forms, building up to the moment when the burning desire within the protagonists explodes, and is expressed through a magnificent ring of fire effect. The illusory nature of their protective bubble collapses again through some fine projections that show the spherical edifice crumbling around them, as King Marke and his men discover the infidelity of his wife and his most trusted companion. For Act 3, this sphere is reversed, becomes convex, suggesting Tristan’s expulsion from the protective curve of Isolde and King Marke’s land, the desolation of the moon projected upon it evoking Tristan’s mood and state of mind, up until the moment that an extraordinarily effective glow of golden light is beamed through it at the consummation of their life in the death at the ‘Liebestod‘.

The singing was wonderful, particularly from Ann Petersen, who has all the necessary strength in her voice, but also a wonderful creamy tone that is deeply attractive, particularly for this role. (She will be singing Isolde for the Welsh National Opera at Cardiff in 2012, so look out for that). Clifton Forbis also has an attractive tone to his tenor voice, and although not always up to the level of Petersen, has all the necessary conviction where it counts. The two worked well together in this respect, and Forbis certainly made Tristan’s torment in Act 3 real and fully felt. The overall strength of the opera was rounded out by solid performances from Stella Grigorian’s Bragäne, Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s Kurwenal and Christof Fischesser’s King Marke, the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon conducted well by Kirill Petrenko. Although solid and impressive on all fronts, in the performance and in the appropriate tone found throughout in the staging, ultimately for me however the production didn’t quite have the full emotional force or find that spark of magic that lies at the heart of Tristan und Isolde. A wonderful production nonetheless, visually imaginative and deeply involving in a way that certainly held the audience in its thrall.