Janáček - The Makropoulos Case (Paris, 2023)

Leoš Janáček - The Makropoulos Case

Opéra National de Paris, 2023

Susanna Mälkki, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Karita Mattila, Pavel Černoch, Nicholas Jones, Ilanah Lobel-Torres, Johan Reuter, Cyrille Dubois, Károly Szemerédy, Peter Bronder 

Paris Opera Play - 13th October 2023

I could think of several reasons why the idea of Krzysztof Warlikowski directing a Janáček opera would be an attractive proposition - attractive enough in my case to start a subscription with Paris Opera Play to watch a livestream broadcast. The science-fiction nature of The Makropoulos Case and its modernity lends itself to wild flights of imagination, and the relatively short running time of the opera means that an adventurous director like Warlikowski doesn't have to strive too hard to make it fit with what will undoubtedly push a concept beyond the limits of what the opera can sustain. And the promotional 'King Kong' images it has to be said show that Warlikowski is going to push his own ideas and distinctive view of opera as far as he can.

He can't help himself with this one, such is the richness of the 'script' and the 'soundtrack' he has to work with that he can indulge his love of classic and iconic movies to the extent that even a short opera like Makropoulos is somehow extended to almost 2 hours. Regardless of what you think of the director's style and techniques, you can hardly argue with is his choice of 'Marilyn Monroe' to represent the superstar fame of the opera's ageless icon Emilia Marty and her tragic situation.

The opening section, that this director often fills with filmed movie footage of his own for his productions, this time uses original classic Hollywood footage of 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'King Kong', neither of which feature Monroe of course, but blending these with documentary footage recounting the string of marriages and the tragedy of a legend, the fall of Marilyn Monroe, they tangentially serve to provide an effective link between her life and The Makropoulos Case. Rather than take place within the offices of the lawyer Kolenaty then, this merges into a kind of on-stage reenactment of the unveiling of bound King Kong to a New York audience. No, definitely not the most obvious of connections to the start of The Makropoulos Case.

And yet, there are plenty of references in the libretto to connect the tragedy of Elina Makropoulos with Marilyn Monroe - "Nothing is eternal. 'Vanitas' …ashes to ashes!" "What can you care about a woman of ill repute who lived 100 years ago?". It might not draw anything new out of the opera, but it certainly provides a fresh way to look at the work, a new way to connect to its themes, since the plot is a fairly convoluted one. Warlikowski's production certainly brings out how women have been objectified by men over the years the harm inflicted on Emilia Marty as a woman who has lived through it and seen it all, been abused and mistreated by men trying to mold her in the image of their fantasies. "See this scar on my neck? Another man tried to kill me. I'm not going to undress to show you all the marks men have left on my body". she tells a besotted Albert Gregor, in thrall to the lure of the glamorous image.

It's a gift of a role for any star soprano who is able to project a similar glamorous allure, and Karita Mattila proves to be a good choice for her ability to inhabit the persona of the enigma that is Emilia Marty; a star, diva, a Norma Desmond. Dressed as Marilyn Monroe in a constantly billowing Seven Year Itch dress is a bit more of a stretch, but this is opera and almost every opera has a singer cast in a role that they don't match physically or in age, and Mattila carries it off surprising well. This is after all an opera where we are dealing with a character who is an ageless 337, so anything goes surely? 'Anything goes surely' being the philosophy of Warlikowski as well you could say. What matters is that she can sing the role and inhabit the role with personality. 

Mattila's voice might be a little weaker now in terms of volume, but she delivers a hugely convincing performance and the personality is definitely all there. Her voice sounded a little muffled in places, but it's hard to judge that from a live web broadcast. She still sings with great control, singing in Czech, which is doubtlessly challenging. As is the role itself, which Warlikowski doesn't make any easier, but there is little room for doubt about her ability there, her performance very impressive, genuinely magnetic and charismatic. All the roles are similarly well-cast and performed with notable performances from Pavel Černoch as Albert 'Bertik' Gregor and Ilanah Lobel-Torres as Krista. As often proves to be the case, 'Maxi' Hauck brings a humorous touch to the opera, sung here by Peter Bronder as an ice-cream salesman during the interval at the theatre/movie theatre where Emilia is appearing in a fully-staged reconstruction of Fay Wray being picked up by Kong.

Set designer Małgorzata Szczęśniak provides an impressive set and staging for this scene, a key scene in the work that succeeds in capturing the wonder, humour and the underlying tragedy of life that - like Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen - lies at the heart of the work. Also, since the work does relate to the nature of the artist taking on many roles, exploring human experience, the nature of aging or remaining ageless, it does relate well also to Sunset Boulevard. Maxi becomes Erich von Stroheim's butler to Emilia's Marilyn Monroe/Norma Desmond, the opera finishing with a swimming pool scene that captures the glamour of the lifestyle and the tragedy to unfold there. Ars longa, vita brevis.

It's all there - glamour, spectacle, consideration of the nature of living and being human - all wrapped up in a marvellous entertainment with glorious music conducted here by Susanna Mälkki. That's The Makropoulos Case and there's no question all the glamour, spectacle and full consideration of what the opera has to tell us about the nature of living is fully what you get in Krzysztof Warlikowski's new production for the Paris Opera.

External Links: Opéra National de Paris, Paris Opera Play

Wagner - Parsifal (Budapest, 2022)

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Hungarian State Opera, 2022

Balázs Kocsár, András Almási-Tóth, István Kovácsházi, Andrea Szántó, András Palerdi, Michele Kalmandy, István Rácz, Károly Szemerédy, Eszter Zavaros, Anna Csenge Fürjes, Tivadar Kiss, Barna Bartos, Lilla Horti, Ildikó Megyimórecz, Lusine Sahakyan, Beatrix Fodor, Boglárka Brindás, Melinda Heiter, Bea Egyed, Laura Fehér, Virág Rovó, Judit Németh, József Mukk, András Káldi Kiss, Benjámin Taba, Milos Katonka

OperaVision - 15th April 2022

Parsifal is not like any other opera, and not just because Wagner called it a Bühnenweihfestspiel "A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage" for Good Friday. It operates on a deep level beyond the surface narrative, exploring issues of faith and brotherhood, the common condition of being human in infinite space and time as a physical being and a spiritual one, the condition of living through pain, the desire to seek release and redemption. So all-encompassing is its view of humanity that even that is a poor and inadequate description of a work that I have barely scratched the surface of in many reviews, so evidently it's going to be even more difficult for a director bringing it to the stage and seeking to illuminate a part of the work or even more ambitiously, the whole.

What should be more evident if you can't follow the narrative or probe its underlying meaning, is that the music expresses what Parsifal is about and touches the listener much more directly than any idea a stage director might have. It's always interesting to see what a director chooses, how ambitious he is, how successful he is, and I personally never fail to find something new in this music drama each time someone else works with it. I'm not sure how successful or ambitious the 2022 Good Friday production directed by András Almási-Tóth for Budapest will be seen to be, but it has some ideas that get across the intent of the work, which regardless impresses by the sheer majesty and unparalleled brilliance and beauty of the work itself.

In fact the first idea that this production seems to employ is one similar to the recent Vienna State Opera production. A little confusingly it tells us during the opening scene that the events have already taken place, that the fellowship of the Knights of the Holy Grail has fallen, Amfortas no longer able to sustain them through the painful ritual of revealing the Grail. Using a double actor for the young Parsifal, the older man looks back on the events that took place when he first arrived at Montsalvat with some measure of regret at his foolishness and naivety.

It's an idea that works well enough and a little better than the Vienna production since it doesn't try to extend this division throughout the whole work. It also succeeds in choosing to have the events of the opera take place in a fairly neutral setting. Act I looks like it is set in a car showroom with large windows, not some mythical land or castle of Montsalvat. The knights wear modern dress but retain some of the ceremonial trappings of the knights, some wearing puffer jackets others armoured breastplates.

As far as the key scenes of Act I go within this setting, the director retains some of the formality of the rituals and traditions, the communion the brotherhood of the Knights with the Grail. ​The Verwandlungsmusik scene takes on a Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey-like aspect, going down a wormhole of kaleidoscopic lights. Act I ends with the young Parsifal wandering about the stage lost, moved but unsure what he has witnessed. His eyes have been opened but there is a long journey ahead to understand and fulfil his own role in bringing a message of redemption for mankind.

In Act II the Flowermaidens are dressed in white robes and garlands in a scene of pagan worshipping around trees in the courtyard of Klingsor's castle. Some semi-naked nymphs are draped over branches like forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve figures, looking lost, briefly appear in the moments up to Parsifal's kiss of revelation with Kundry, when he is struck with a deeper understanding of love and compassion. It's at this moment that the young silent actor playing Parsifal disappears and István Kovácsházi's mature singing Parsifal takes his place in the scenic drama.

Act III returns to the Montsalvat that we saw initially, showing the change that has happened in the years of Parsifal's wandering. It's a bare room with a bed on one side and swan in a glass case on the other. Kundry raises the screen to reveal the returned enlightened Parsifal as a knight in black armour holding the spear. The idea of a return to innocence, kindness and redemption is shown in a doubled scene where a second Kundry washes the feet of a child, a motherly gesture that is key to Parsifal's understanding of love and compassion, as well suggesting the Christian ritual washing away of sin through baptism and anointment; an attainment of purity and rebirth. The barren world is also reborn, surrounding the room with projections of green forest that dissolve into bold key leitmotif words and phrases from the opera; 'die Wunde', 'der reine Tor', 'der Speer', 'der Graal'.

Whether any of this adds anything new to the work is debatable, but certain elements come to the fore and, such is the nature of this work, there are a variety of personal interpretations that will depend on the receptiveness of each individual viewer and listener. Kundry, as is often the case, can be the key to the work and stood out for me here. She - moreso than Amfortas - represents humanity's progress, her endurance of suffering, shame and failure throughout the ages, longing for peace and sleep, for release, to be relieved of the weight of knowledge. She is the past that humanity wants to reject or deny, and is scorned by the Knights who aspire to more noble aims. Aspects of her pain and foolishness and attainment of purity are replicated and given other dimensions by the Knights of the Grail, the suffering of Amfortas, the conflict and innocence of Parsifal.

Similarly, no matter how you continually attempt to reduce the work down to narrative, themes and descriptive words, it always fails to adequately convey what Parsifal is about. It's a work that gains in weight and meaning with each passing year, with each new performance and production, accumulating history, connecting humanity with the modern world and what is currently going on. If you want to see the current conflict in Ukraine in it, it's there, so all-encompassing is the work, and it doesn't even need a director to make that explicit. It's there inside the individual to bring their understanding and experience of the world to it. Wagner's Parsifal is a supreme work of art in that respect, living and open to continual re-evaluation, never to be pinned down to one thing or another.

It is nonetheless performance art and interpretation is relevant. Here conducted by Balázs Kocsár at the recently renovated and reopened Ybl Palace in Budapest it came across as powerfully as it should. The strongest performances here I felt were from Michele Kalmandy as Amfortas and Andrea Szántó as Kundry. There was nothing special about the interpretation, but both sung it well. The same could also be said of András Palerdi as Gurnemanz and István Kovácsházi as Parsifal, although both were just a little under-powered, lacking the emotional depth for the expression of compassion. István Rácz was a fine Titurel.

Eötvös - Senza Sangue/Bartók - Bluebeard’s Castle (Armel, 2016)

Péter Eötvös - Senza Sangue/Béla Bartók - Duke Bluebeard’s Castle 

Opéra Grand Avignon, 2016

Péter Eötvös, Róbert Alföldi, Nadine Duffaut, Romain Bockler, Albane Carrére, Adrienn Miksch, Károly Szemerédy

Armel Opera Festival/ARTE Concert

Based on a psychological revenge thriller by Alessandro Baricco, Péter Eötvös' short one-act opera Senza Sangue might not seem to have much in common with Bartók's Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, but the pairing of the works by the two Hungarian composers proves to be complementary. The connections and commonalities between the two works are further emphasised by the conducting of both by Péter Eötvös in this Opéra Grand Avignon production for the Armel Opera Festival.

Effectively, Eötvös has reduced Baricco's novel down to its final confrontation, bringing the intensity of what has gone before entirely into a conclusion that is short on drama but filled with tension and intriguing implications. Nina has tracked down a man she has been looking for, a 72 year old lottery ticket seller called Tito who formerly went under the name of Pedro Cantos. 52 years ago he was one of three men who killed her father and he is now the only one left alive. Nina invites the man for a coffee where she reveals that she was present when her father was killed, and she believes it was Pedro who fired the first shot.

From the conversation that takes place between the man and the woman - the dramatic action of the opera not really consisting of much more than that - we are led to believe that Nina has spent her whole life tracking down the three men, and may have been responsible for their deaths, but reduced down to the conclusion alone Senza Sangue becomes much more than a revenge story. It's about a young life that has been destroyed by war, condemned to live in hatred for the rest of one's life, shaped by this one terrible event. "Even if life has no meaning, we go through it with one desire", Nina tells the man, "To return to the hell that created us".

If there's not much in the way of drama, the accompanying music by Péter Eötvös delves much deeper into this troubled soul. The music is tonal, but dark, slow, twisting and stripped down of ornamentation. Not surprisingly, considering the subject, it reminds the listener of Strauss's Elektra, moods fluctuating and rising to the surface in surges, always with ominous undercurrents. The music doesn't just take in the woman's view however, but contrasts it with the man's perspective. There's hesitancy in its flitting, dancing, confusion but with a thread of acceptance underpinning the fear that this day would eventually come. But there's also a measure of challenge to the woman's viewpoint.

The story is evidently not as simple as it seems, and Eötvös's music and the setting probe this further. The man does not attempt to condone his killing of Nina's father, but he does make the point that it was done in a time of war. He was a soldier, he was fighting to build a better society. Vengeance runs both ways. Moreover, he was aware of the young child in the room, saw her hiding and let her live. The tone between the man and the woman gradually changes the more they discuss and come to understand each other. For all the lack of drama and the 'talky' nature of the treatment, Senza Sangue is a subject as operatic as they come, all the more intense for being played out between two people. Péter Eötvös has room to explore these characters in this situation for all the complexity and nuance of their positions and does so brilliantly in this fascinating work.

Senza Sangue is well paired here with Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. Seen together, the commonalities are obvious, both short one-act operas, both detailing a situation between a man and a woman where there is much more going on beneath the surface than the obvious, the music of both works highly attuned to the psychological or the symbolic underpinnings. Perhaps most significantly - although Senza Sangue is in the Italian language of its source novel - both works are by Hungarian composers.

Conducting his own work as well as Bartók's, Eötvös emphasises the musical connections between the works, or perhaps it might be more a case that he adapts Bluebeard to make it a little more complementary to the tone and the intent that has been established in Senza Sangue. This is not the harsh, jagged, disturbing inner-world of Bartók's dark score, but rather a more sensitive reading that likewise strives to find a neutral position between Judith's troubling inquisitiveness and Bluebeard's admonition to "look but don't question". Like the lesson in Senza Sangue, you won't always find the answers that you want, or worse, you can risk creating the hell you are trying to escape.

Directed by Róbert Alföldi (Senza Sangue) and Nadine Duffaut (Duke Bluebeard's Castle) for the Armel festival, the stage production for both works is clean, simple and neutral, reflecting the neutral position of the musical treatment of the subjects. Other than a gun being shown in the hands of the woman at the start, there is little in the way of props in Senza Sangue, the real drama taking place on an inner psychological level. It's much the same with Duke Bluebeard's Castle, with only sinister figures in the background and semi-abstract projections for each of the rooms adding to the disquieting, sinister undercurrents that come with the peeling back of the psychological layers. The imagery remains, surprisingly but appropriately for the purpose of this production, rather bloodless - senza sangue.

The singing is excellent throughout, noninflected, expressive of character without over-emphasis, allowing those ambiguities and uncertainties within the personalities and the subject to remain. Romain Bockler as Pedro in Senza Sangue was the only competition singer and held all the dramatic tension well alongside Albane Carrére's Nina. Adrienn Miksch and Károly Szemerédy took those personalities a stage further in Duke Bluebeard's Castle, the careful dance between probing and wariness leading to a fraught situation that demands a resolution, although not necessarily lead to the desired outcome.


Links: ARTE Concert, Armel Opera Festival

Janáček - Jenůfa

Leoš Janáček - Jenůfa

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2009

Ivor Bolton, Stéphane Braunschweig, Amanda Roocroft, Miroslav Dvorský, Nikolai Schukoff, Deborah Polaski, Mette Ejsing, Marta Ubieta, Károly Szemerédy, Miguel Sola, Marta Mathéu, María José Suárez

Opus Arte

One of the composer’s earliest works, from 1904, Janáček’s Jenůfa is a wonderful piece of work with a melodramatic but gritty story that has its roots in realism and traditional popular folklore, and it has music to match with a lush sweep of Wagnerian Romanticism, the punch of Slavic dance arrangements and a modern Strauss-like sensibility that ties the nature of the characters and their actions to identifiable but complex modern musical and speech tone patterns developed by Janácek. Unfortunately, this particular performance, recorded at the Teatro Real de Madrid in 2009, is for the most part not the most impressive means of experiencing one of the greatest operas of the early twentieth century.

It’s difficult from this production to grasp any sense of time, location or community sensibility that is so important in identifying the nature of Jenůfa’s dilemma. Jenůfa is in love with Števa and engaged to be married to him, despite his half-brother Laca being more devoted to the young woman, and perhaps a better match. When her stepmother Kostelnička publically delays the marriage until Števa gets his act together, she is unaware that Jenůfa is pregnant. The secret birth of a baby outside wedlock makes the marriage to Števa and the fate of Jenůfa more complicated to arrange, as does the scar on the young woman’s face accidentally left there by the jealous Laca, and despair over the turn of events drives Kostelnička to take matters into her own hands.

Although it does seem to improve considerably by the time we reach the powerful and climactic third act, the whole sense of fluidity and rhythm of the work and the all-important speech tones seem to be lost in the uneven tempo of Ivor Bolton’s conducting. It seems to limp from one scene to the next somewhat disjointedly, and it’s not until quite late in the performance that the conductor manages to bring the precision and dramatic tone required out of the orchestra. The staging by Stéphane Braunschweig is also inadequate and it’s not so much that the set is minimalist – each scene consisting of bare walls and one significant object in a spotlight to indicate location – as that there is little here to support mood or the dramatic action. Up until the final act, it’s a fairly anonymous staging, dark, with stark lighting on the characters, that doesn’t have the requisite impact and fails to draw the viewer into what is very much a story related to the community, as well as an interior journey.

The singing is good in all the principal roles, if not outstanding. There’s nothing here, for example, to create the kind of impression or investment in the roles that Elisabeth Söderström and Eva Randová achieve in their incredibly passionate and chilling renditions of Jenůfa and Kostelnička for the classic Charles Mackerras recording of this opera (although it is perhaps unfair to expect any live performance to match this). Amanda Roocroft however is a fine Jenůfa and Deborah Polaski an excellent Kostelnička, both of them growing into the roles (or perhaps it just took me a while to acclimatise to them), gathering intensity as the opera reaches the third act. Nikolai Schukoff and Miroslav Dvorský as rival half-brothers Števa and Laca, also give fine performances. None of them however are helped by the inadequacy of the staging or by the mediocre playing of the orchestra.

Something close to the real impact of the work is achieved by the time we get to the remarkably beautiful and poignant duet at the conclusion of the opera, but otherwise, this production succeeds only as far as making Jenůfa sound like an ordinary opera, when it’s really a work that has so much more to offer and deserves a lot better than this in terms of staging and performance. It’s not helped at all by the inadequate video transfer on the Blu-ray. The extremely dark stage (as is often the case in Teatro Real productions in my experience) scarcely looks better than standard-definition, with little detail and a highly contrasted image that exhibits lighting fluctuation and exposure variations. The image is somewhat juddery, and this isn’t helped by jerky camera work. The disc contains only a Cast and Synopsis, but there is a more detailed examination of how the music works alongside the drama in the accompanying booklet.