Verdi - Don Carlo (Vienna, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

Wiener Staatsoper, 2024

Philippe Jordan, Kirill Serebrennikov, Joshua Guerrero, Asmik Grigorian, Roberto Tagliavini, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Étienne Dupuis, Dmitry Ulyanov, Ivo Stanchev, Ilia Staple

ARTE Concert - October 2024

The intent of a director to modernise an opera production, particularly a work based (loosely) on historical sources but often dubiously dramatised for the original audience of its time, should in theory be to make it more relatable to a modern audience less in thrall (in theory) to wealth and power being held by a monarch. Some directors admittedly take that to strange places to impose their own vision and concept, but the intent must be to bring out the essential humanity and tragedy between the private lives of such figures and their public face. Don Carlos is just such a work where those matters are to the forefront and given a remarkable musical treatment full of ambition towards Grand Opéra by Verdi, here stripped back to its essentials in the Milan version, so one would hope that a director would confront those issues head-on.

At the raising of the curtain on the 2024 Vienna production directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, opening in a modern laboratory environment, a single person in the audience can be heard on the live ARTE transmission voicing their disapproval before a single note has been played, not even waiting to see what the director's intentions are, presumably since it doesn't look like it is going to correspond with how he personally feels it should be, showing no regard for what anyone else thinks. It's clearly someone either seeking attention or ignorant about the creative team involved at this production at the Wiener Staatsoper and the nature of opera itself as a modern progressive art form. Probably all of the above. Personally, I find Serebrennikov a director of interest from past productions of Wagner (Parsifal in Vienna, Lohengrin in Paris). And if the lone booer has any sense of shame, he ought to be humiliated at the conclusion that reveals itself as a thoughtful challenge to the fetishisation of the past set against the imperatives of the present.

Serebrennikov's version of Don Carlo is undoubtedly convoluted in its treatment, adding additional levels to an opera already filled with contradictions and contrasts. Using mirror images with actors in authentic period costume doubling for their counterparts in the present day, the director actually manages to present the attraction of the historical costume drama element of the work, while making the romantic and emotional content of the personal drama work on a contemporary human level, furthering and deepening those contrasts and contradictions that fire the drama. Despite the contemporary setting appearing to be of lesser significance than the war and political events within the royal court of King Philip II in the mid-16th century, Serebrennikov also successfully finds a way to make this distant and for many, obscure historical period meaningful and contributing to the turmoil faced by the figures in the opera. 

The laboratory that so appalled at least one member of the Vienna audience is a Costume Research Institute, where scientists are studying historical clothing and recreating the dress of the period of Philip II for their research. Elisabetta, a scientist in the laboratory, is troubled over her betrayal of Carlo by her marriage to his father, the chief director of the Institute, who is a bit of a tyrant. Working in such an environment, the workers, scientists and costume designers at the institute perhaps then see their own lives and troubles reflected in the past, and it's interesting to note when seen in this context how much attention is brought to and importance given in the libretto to dress, appearance and elegance. Rodrigo and Eboli in an early scene even have a moment to discuss the beauty and grace of French women, while projections on a screen above the stage show fetishistic images of the costumes detail and fitting. Combined the opera and this production show that there is limited benefit in trying to understand people in the past through the costumes they wear, that the truth about what went on is more likely to be reflected in how people behave now.

What the production doesn't do then is examine the political and historical conflicts of the 16th century, and I think most of us can live with that. For Carlos, Elisabetta, Philip and indeed Rodrigo and Eboli - and through them - we experience human conflict, their stoicism to contain deep feelings and emotions against a world that puts obstacles in their path, obstacles that don't necessarily need to include the conquest of Flanders. The horror of the war there is compared here to an Asian sweatshop being exploited for cheaply made clothing, the associated environmental catastrophe it entails all for the folly of keeping the human mannequins of the western world in the latest fast fashion. Consumerism as oppression. Carlo just wears a plain T-shirt with a 'Liberta' slogan attached with sticky tape. Rodrigo's states 'Save our Land' and those messages are what is really important and it is given real force here. Mainly thanks to Verdi's score of course, but the scenes and imagery are equally as effective, the auto-da-fé enacted here on climate change activists disrupting the historical fashion show in protest against the destruction the environment. The burning here is the burning of the planet.

To be fair to the lone booer (and the few hesitant followers who later join him at the end of Act III) it's a valid question whether an opera like Don Carlo really needs all this directorial intervention to work effectively, or is the director just using the composer's masterpiece to impose his own views? That's a judgement call, but it can be both. Don Carlos/Don Carlo is a difficult opera to make work effectively, in my experience of seeing many productions of it. With Verdi and this work in particular, the true challenge in presenting the work lies more often in how well you can cast singing roles that are technically and dramatically challenging. It's a factor that is just as essential to overcome any perceived weaknesses or flaws in the production or indeed the opera itself. A weak link can be particularly critical in Don Carlos. Saying that, there is little to fault here in either performance or the director's presentation, which is more nuanced than the brief description I've provided above. The historical models, for example, are dressed up in the first half and stripped back in the second as their true selves are revealed. There are many other touches to make the historical converge with the modern, including biographical notes of the real life figures added in projections, and a context that permits a wider examination of the use and abuse of power.

There are, as I said, no real weak links in the singing either. Indeed the roles of Carlo and Elisabetta are as good as you could expect. Asmik Grigorian sings Elisabetta with her usual conviction and skilled dramatic interpretation. Joshua Guerrero's Carlo is also well-characterised and sung, again with the necessary ability and conviction. Eve-Maud Hubeaux's Princess Eboli is excellent, her confession to Elisabetta in Act III intense and tragic. There are deep emotions stirred on all sides, love and betrayal of friendship valued over position is an important aspect of the opera and this carries weight in all the principal roles. As such Rodrigo’s role is important too and Étienne Dupuis brings that out well in his performance. Only Philip II perhaps suffers from the direction. You don't get a sense that he really has anything grand at stake as he would were he genuinely a King under the yoke of the Catholic church's Inquisition while he is also facing a personal humiliation in his love life in his 'Ella giammai m'amò'. Roberto Tagliavini's singing isn't able to bring out the heaviness of the head that wears the crown.

Don Carlos/Don Carlo, in whatever incarnation, is one of Verdi's greatest works, or at least the one I always find that has real meaty issues as well as intriguing flaws and challenges that have to be creatively confronted by a stage director. It is also, despite the many revisions and versions, musically one of the composer's finest works, through composed but incorporating utterly beautiful melodies (although personally I'm less fond of the Spanish flavours) and wonderful attention and attunement to character detail and expression. It sounds absolutely marvellous here under Philippe Jordan and the Vienna Orchestra. If there were any sceptics left in the audience by the time the devastating conclusion was reached, they were drowned out by the deserved applause for a thoughtful and powerful account of this tremendous opera.

External links: ARTE Concert, Wiener Staatsoper

Puccini - Madama Butterfly (Glyndebourne, 2018)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Glyndebourne, 2018

Omer Meir Wellber, Annilese Miskimmon, Olga Busuioc, Joshua Guerrero, Carlo Bosi, Elizabeth DeShong, Michael Sumuel, Jennifer Witton, Eirlys Myfanwy Davies, Adam Marsden, Oleg Budaratskiy, Simon Mechlinski, Ida Ränzlöv, Shuna Scott Sendall, Michael Mofidian, Jake Muffett

Opus Arte - Blu-ray
I didn't find the 2018 Glyndebourne production of Madama Butterfly to be too adventurous when I first saw it in its streaming broadcast, but in truth few Madama Butterflies can depart with any success from the very specific cultural and historical context that Puccini's opera covers. A bit of emphasis here, a bit of highlighting character traits in one version, playing up or playing down the national stereotypes elsewhere. There's not really a lot of room for manoeuvre. There are however ways that work and ways that don't and Annilese Miskimmon's production, working well with Omer Meir Wellber's conducting of the score, clearly gets across everything that is great about Puccini's masterpiece.

Miskimmon's production at least makes one or two concessions towards modernisation and a break from familiarity and cliché, placing it in a different period and context that seeks to highlight certain harsh realities and truths of its subject. She tries to strike a balance that attempts to bring it a little more up to date rather than appearing to be a situation so far removed from familiar modern attitudes as to appear as almost fantasy. Set in the 1950s, where there was also a post-war trade in Japanese brides to American servicemen, Miskimmon sets Act I not in the familiar surrounds of the idyllic Japanese house perched on the hills over Nagasaki, but in Goro's Marriage Bureau with a tattoo parlour and a cheap hotel in the alley outside.

Projections are used showing genuine documentary newsreel footage of US troops purchasing Japanese brides after the war: "Yanks Marry Japanese Maids", the titles proclaim, with footage showing new brides given instruction on "Learning to be an American Wife". It's perhaps not exactly the same situation as Cio-Cio-San, but even if it's presented in contrast it does highlight the reality. Or if not so much a reality, selling the American dream as a reality. There's no real commentary or emphasis placed on the ethics of it all however, on Pinkerton marrying a 15 year old, collecting her like a butterfly or even commentary on the American imperialism side of things here. It's a simple business transaction, a trade, but one where the two partners are expecting different things.

Keeping Madama Butterfly relatable, Miskimmon also uses old movie footage and in Act II, develops Butterfly's home decor to look like or be Butterfly's attempt to emulate American life learned only from the Technicolor movies of Douglas Sirk. It marks a strong contrast between the reality of the first act and the attempt by Butterfly to live up to her side of the deal by becoming an American wife. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, Puccini's music is a perfect match for a Sirk melodrama, the fluctuations of tone and the layers of irony matched also in the shifts of light, the falling leaves, the blaze of autumnal colours and the darkness that is drawing in. Miskimmon also makes good use of the discomfort of Suzuki ("Povera Butterfly"!) and Sharpless to measure out the distance between the dream and the reality.

One of the great benefits of being able to revisit this production on Blu-ray s the opportunity it gives to hear the detail of the musical performance in a High Resolution recording, in surround sound or in lossless LPCM stereo. There are a few obvious pieces of 'retouching' the plaintive sound of what sounds like a distant harmonica accompanying the Humming Chorus, but it's much easier in now to also observe how Omer Meir Wellber catches the ebb and flow of the score that create Puccini's magic. Act III really demonstrates those qualities, in the conducting as much as in Puccini's writing, never laying it on thick, but gently pulling back now and again only to strike forward to hit harder next time, and as such it feels much more in tune with real human feelings.

It only really carries that urgency if the director can make the characters real and for there to be anguish and sympathy on all sides. Pinkerton is often made out to be a villain, and that can spur indignation at his treatment of Cio-Cio-San, but indignation isn't what Madama Butterfly is about. Annilese Miskimmon see it more as a human failing, the Pinkerton of three years later not so much regretting his fake marriage as realising that it was never realistic, as his friend Sharpless repeatedly warned him at the time. It doesn't mean that he is blameless, but it helps to see all sides, and that's what this production seems to be able to balance well, finding the true emotional toll the situation takes on each of them.

Seen that way it's easier to admire the heartfelt performance of Joshua Guerrero's Pinkerton here. It's a little 'operatic' but in the context of a Sirkian response to Puccini it's acceptable and effective. Olga Busuioc's heartfelt Cio-Cio-San also feels deeply human, completely immersed in the role, if rather holding to the conventional mannerisms and gestures. There are the usual reliable performances from Carlo Bosi's Goro and Elizabeth DeShong's Suzuki, regular performers in these roles, but I was more impressed in this viewing by Michael Sumuel's Sharpless. He conveys well the discomfort of this difficult situation, a key sentiment as it is the same one shared by the audience. His singing is is also full of wonderful expression.

Unsurprisingly, the 2018 Glyndebourne Madama Butterfly looks absolutely stunning in the High Definition Blu-ray presentation. The image is clear and sharp, the warm autumnal tones and blue Nagasaki skies glowing off the screen. The DTS HD-Master Audio 5,1 surround gives more ambience to the performance, the LPCM a much more direct punch, but both show off the detail and beauty of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's playing. Extras are limited to a Cast Gallery and an interview with Olga Busuioc on the role and character of Cio-Cio-San, but Annilese Miskimmon also provides some director notes in the enclosed booklet.

Links: Glyndebourne

Puccini - Madama Butterfly (Glyndebourne, 2018)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Glyndebourne, 2018

Omer Meir Wellber, Annilese Miskimmon, Olga Busuioc, Joshua Guerrero, Carlo Bosi, Elizabeth DeShong, Michael Sumuel, Jennifer Witton, Eirlys Myfanwy Davies, Adam Marsden, Oleg Budaratskiy, Simon Mechlinski, Ida Ränzlöv, Shuna Scott Sendall, Michael Mofidian, Jake Muffett

Culturebox - 21 June 2018

Opera houses don't tend to get adventurous when it comes to Madama Butterfly, but there have been some interesting new looks at one of Puccini's most popular works. La Scala in Milan went right back to the original 'failed' 1904 version of the opera that Puccini was forced to rewrite, which was fascinating even if in the end it still played mostly to the conventional locations and imagery. A more abstract Madama Butterfly at La Monnaie in 2017 on the other hand certainly stripped it back of its kitsch Japanese elements and expectations only to prove that most of those elements and the melodrama may be integral to the opera, and it won't work without it. Madama Butterfly almost demands 'safe' by definition, as any attempt to tinker around too much with expectations is unlikely to play well with its target audience.

Madama Butterfly and even the selection of it is surely more a consideration of providing a safe choice for Glyndebourne audiences (and as a touring production) than for any desire to artistically explore the work for new meaning. Annilese Miskimmon's production however makes one or two concessions towards modernisation, placing it in a different period and context that seeks to highlight certain harsh realities and truths of its subject. She tries to strike a balance that attempts to bring it a little more up to date rather than appearing to be a situation so far removed from familiar modern attitudes as to appear as almost fantasy, but there's also clearly a necessity not to throw Butterfly out with the bathwater.

Act I doesn't differ greatly from any traditional representation of the marriage scenes. It's a 50s' setting, where Goro's Marriage Bureau handles matches for US troops with Japanese brides after the war, a situation that is a little more relatable, even if it still carries implications of inequality. Projections are used showing genuine documentary newsreel footage: "Yanks Marry Japanese Maids", with the new brides given instruction on "Learning to be an American Wife". It's perhaps not exactly the same situation as Cio-Cio-San, but even if it's presented in contrast it does highlight the reality. Or if not so much a reality, selling the American dream as a reality. There's no real commentary or emphasis placed on the ethics of it all however, on Pinkerton marrying a 15 year old, collecting her like a butterfly or even commentary on the American imperialism side of things here. It leaves the match it open as if it's something that both parties go into in good faith. The real test of the marriage and the production will come later and there's plenty of opportunity there to feel outrage.

In line with the tone of Puccini's music, Act II does indeed mark a strong contrast to Act I. Butterfly has adopted American lifestyle big time, not just in little details of her manner of western dress, but in her confidence and attitudes as well. Or rather it's more like rather a Japanese view of American life that is influenced by the Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk, and I can't imagine any film director who is closer to the sentiments of Madama Butterfly than Douglas Sirk (although you could try Mikio Naruse or Kenji Mizoguchi if you were going for a more authentic view of the perspective of a Japanese woman rather than an American director - or even Yasujiro Ozu's later colour films which show the creeping influence of America on Japanese life in the 1950s). So from that point of view, the 1950s' Sirkian setting works perfectly, working with the light, the colour and the seasons, as leaves fall and darkness draws in.

Thereafter it's wiser to just let Puccini do his work, and this production does just that. Conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, it felt like a relative straightforward interpretation of the score, but there were a few nice touches that worked with the mood and the production. I'm not sure what instrument usually plays the melody in the Humming Chorus, but here it has the distant melancholic sound of a harmonica playing that feels appropriate. It may not be inspiring or inspired, but it's certainly successful in getting across the intended impact and message of the opera. You can't work against Puccini without defeating the purpose of the work and to do that would not only be failing the opera and failing the audience, but in many ways you're failing Cio-Cio-San and many like her in real life over the years.

You'd need to be made of stone to get through Act III unmoved here, the trio of Sharpless, Suzuki and Pinkerton, the choking sobs that are the only answer's to Butterfly's question "Quella donna, che vuol da me?", and the recognition that "Tutto è finito". Watch it through a wet blur, which is as it should be. Which is as much to the credit of the singers here as Puccini. It only really carries that urgency if the director can make the characters real and for there to be anguish and sympathy on all sides. Often Pinkerton is made out to be a villain, and that can spur indignation at his treatment of Cio-Cio-San. Some, including Miskimmon, see it more as a human failing, the Pinkerton of three years later not so much regretting his fake marriage as realising that it was never realistic. It doesn't mean that he is blameless, but it helps to see all sides, and that's what this production seems to be able to balance well, finding the true emotional weight of each.

As such, it's easier to admire the heartfelt performance of Joshua Guerrero's Pinkerton here. It's a little 'operatic' but in the context of a Sirkian response to Puccini it's acceptable and effective. Olga Busuioc handles Cio-Cio-San just as well, if rather holding to the conventional mannerisms and gestures. The experienced Carlo Bosi as Goro, Michael Sumuel's Sharpless and Elizabeth DeShong's Suzuki all support the leads well, although the latter may be a little too emotionally overwrought. Again however, it's to be expected, the cast fulfill what we expect of them, the director and conductor giving us the full Puccini, and the resulting impact is not unexpected either.

Links: Glyndebourne, Culturebox