Korngold - Die Tote Stadt (Brussels, 2020)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Die Tote Stadt

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2020

Lothar Koenigs, Mariusz Treliński, Roberto Saccà, Marlis Petersen, Dietrich Henschel, Bernadetta Grabias, Martina Russomanno, Lilly Jørstad, Florian Hoffmann, Nikolay Borchev, Mateusz Zajdel

La Monnaie Streaming - November 2020

As far as the arts are concerned, the Covid pandemic has changed everything over the last year. Those productions that have managed to be performed in the brief gaps between lockdown measures have had to be rethought and reworked for safety, both for the audience and the performers. In the case of Die Tote Stadt at La Monnaie, it's been particularly challenging for a director like Mariusz Treliński, the Polish film director who likes to take a flamboyant hi-tech approach to his opera productions, using movie references and cinematic techniques. Here it's like his toys have been taken away from him, but as I've noted before, this is such a powerful work in its own right that it needs little in the way of theatrical enhancement.

The production, intended to celebrate the centenary of the work, did start out rather differently when it was first produced in Warsaw, and it did indeed originally have all of the director's familiar enhanced theatrical and cinematic visuals. By the time it came to La Monnaie in Brussels - Belgium hit particularly bad by the spread of the virus - it was necessary to have a rethink to involve less technicians and put as much social distancing between the performers, the orchestra and the audience as possible.

I have to admit, as someone who has enjoyed this director's work in the past Manon Lescault, The Fiery Angel, Iolanta, Duke Bluebeard's Castle) I would have loved to see the full-blown production aligned to Korngold's extravagant orchestrations and melodies, but there is no doubt that the Brussels version of this particular work, re-orchestrated for 57 musicians with the runtime reduced to under two hours, benefits from letting the macabre elements of the Symbolist drama and the concentration of Korngold's musical composition speak for itself.

To say nothing of how it speaks a little more directly than ever before of the nature of the times we are living in, where the idea of a dead city is very much a real thing, and where many can undoubtedly identify with the loss of loved ones. Unsurprisingly, since it relates to a living double replacing a dead woman, Treliński relies on Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' as a reference, and the correlation it has with that work is again in these times much more evident and real, the focus turned very much more inward on the mindset of someone who has been disturbed by the death of a loved one.

The revised production design makes use of three boxes that provide some social distancing, but also serve as a way of showing mental distancing from reality and, although neon-lit, may even remind you of coffins. Ghosts reach out and cling to Paul, naked bodies lie under shrouds that he tries to reanimate. Sung with fervour by Roberto Saccà and with Lothar Koenigs ramping up Korngold musical forces with the reduced orchestration scarcely noticeable, you almost think he could do it. Some enhancements in the way of projections are sparingly and effectively used as backgrounds to allude to the location of the dead city being a projection of a disturbed mind rather than specifically Bruges or any real concrete place.

It's appropriate then that much as Paul is unable to see the beauty of the living Marietta as he longs for an impossible ideal of the perfection of the past that is Maria, opera too now has to deal with a much less perfect reality. That comes through in the performances which have been adapted to the new reality, allowing flesh and blood singers to convey everything that is great about Die Tote Stadt and everything that Korngold makes of it. Marlis Petersen embodies that in her singing and in her superb acting performance. Her 'Marietta's Lied' is just phenomenal in this context, and Paul/Roberto Saccà can be seen to be visibly moved by the beauty of life being breathed into music.

The orchestra of La Monnaie also take centre stage here. Almost literally. They are on the stage behind the performers, probably masked. The orchestra pit is used to extend the boundaries of Paul's mind, the singers donning protective face masks when they venture close to the socially distanced audience at the front of the theatre. Rather than be distracting this actually adds a frisson of real world concern and meaning to the subject. There's no happy ending to Paul's grief and delusion in Mariusz Treliński's take on the story; the nightmare is the reality. Paul remains locked in, in lockdown; there's no escape from the city of death or the madness that descends.

Like in many other areas of our lives, there's clearly a need for opera to adjust to the new reality. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I have to say that La Monnaie have always been creative in their approach to opera, whether it was while holding productions in other locations during the restoration of the theatre a few years ago or in pioneering free live streamed broadcasts. Working with a director like Treliński on Korngold they prove that it might not be necessarily be a bad thing to rethink approaches to opera and music and get back to basics. The new reality imposed by the pandemic is something that we might have to live with for a much longer time, but when opera and theatre does comes back, as it surely will, there's hope that it can be stronger than before.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Strauss - Capriccio (La Monnaie, 2016)

Richard Strauss - Capriccio

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2016

Lothar Koenigs, David Marton, Sally Matthews, Dietrich Henschel, Edgaras Montvidas, Lauri Vasar, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Charlotte Hellekant, François Piolino, Elena Galitskaya, Dmirty Ivanchey, Christian Oldenburg

ARTE Concert - November 2016
 
"Primo le parole, dopo la musica" or is it vice-versa? There's obviously no definitive answer to the question of whether the words or the music are more important in opera. Even precedence is very much down to the practicalities and working methods of the creators and dependant upon the individual preferences of the listener. So on paper at least an opera about a composer and a poet, Flamand and Olivier, debating the subject with a Countess at a private concert soirée doesn't hold out much promise as a rivetting subject for an opera. And yet, Capriccio itself is a work of art that proves that opera can transcend such debates and distinctions.

There's a lot of truth then in what the boorish theatre director La Roche says; on paper both words and score are lifeless. It's a stage production that puts flesh and blood into an opera, that allows it to live and breathe, to reach out and touch the heart of an audience. Of course, even that distinction is academic if the work itself isn't of sufficient quality, insight and humanity, but Strauss's abilities and his work within opera are among the highest the artform has ever seen. Capriccio, his final work, might sound trivial and self-regarding, but it's a fitting testament that still has something important to say on the nature of people and the important role music and art plays in their lives.

Capriccio is indeed a masterpiece from a great composer but, in the spirit of the work itself, even Richard Strauss wouldn't be the opera genius he is without the collaboration of some great writers. His finest works are unquestionably those written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, but Stefan Zweig and Joseph Gregor clearly also contributed the ideas and texts that would inspire Strauss to greatness in Capriccio. The writers are important, but so too presumably is the audience those works were written for and the artists who would perform them. And life itself. The genius of Capriccio is that it is there in this exquisite little work which might seem frivilous, but in reality touches on some fundamental questions about art and its relation to life.

So it is always a risk, but it would be a bit of a crime if a production of Capriccio only managed to come over as trivial and self-important. The words and the music are not enough - although they are a great place to start and Lothar Koenigs certainly brings out the luminous beauty of the orchestral colours - but Capriccio does need attention paid to its characters and their personalities, and that rests on the ability of the director and the performers to bring it to life. Fortunately that's handled very well indeed in David Marton's direction of the work for La Monnaie, and it's also very evident in the singing, with Sally Matthews in particular finding all the beauty and anguish of life in the words and music written for the Countess.

Marton's production does well to strike a balance between the intimacy of the work (that has a basis in the small chamber orchestra performance that opens the opera) and its expansiveness that takes in all the sentiments that the work touches on in passing. There's no avoiding the self-referential nature of the work (which is an opera about a group of people discussing opera and making an opera about themselves discussing opera), so it's not surprising that the set consists of a stage on the stage in a side view of a theatre. A small private theatre obviously that explores the inner workings of the human heart and human interaction as much as it does the craft that goes into writing, directing and performing a piece of music theatre.

It's not just a tussle for artistic recognition and it's not even a tussle between two men trying to seek the affections the Countess; there are other parties involved that have a role to play, however small it might seem. It's not always easy to work out who each of them are at first, or where they are coming from, but Strauss gives them all consideration and blends them into the little world of Capriccio's complications. The prompter, for example, might not seem to be all that vital a role, but without him, the whole enterprise might indeed fail. The Major-domo, the Haushofmeister, also looks on here, clearly in love with the Countess. He might be vital to the smooth running of the household, but he knows he can never be a solution to the conflicts in her heart.

This master/servant role as a metaphor for the impossibility of the mastery of the heart is a device that has been used for a similar effect between the Marschallin and her servant in some productions of Der Rosenkavalier. It's possible to see Madeline, the Countess of Capriccio, as an extension of the thoughts and sentiments that plagued Marschallin, a recap if you like to summarise such themes in this comprehensive work. Marten also uses the young dancer here, showing her in three ages from child to young woman to old lady, to touch on those considerations of the passing of time as it applies to the hard choices that the Countess has to make. Ostensibly that's about how she wants the opera to end, but also evidently it's about where she wants her life to go, knowing that the decisions she makes now will determine the rest of her life.

The successful direction of Capriccio is all about bringing out such undercurrents. What takes place on the surface of Capriccio, in all the discussions of art and opera, is just a metaphor for life. It's what goes on beneath that is just as important; the personalities and the interpretation of them. It would be a shame to miss out on the applying some personality to the richness of the sumptuous music that Strauss has composed for even the most seemingly minor of characters, but it doesn't mean that there have to be any big revelations or deep psychological underpinning. The big things are already there and Marten and the performers concentrate on the little moments and the finer detail.

There is always the danger of the Countess appearing detached, too caught up in the technicalities of the musical debate and her personal love dilemma. Sally Matthews isn't the most expressive actress but her singing is beautiful here, carrying the essential warmth of the Countess and a wider sense of her conflict as being one that applies to life in general. It helps that the other roles are also well defined and sung, with Edgaras Montvidas in particular wonderfully lyrical and charming as Flamand, and Lauri Vasar posing a credible threat as his rival Olivier. Kristinn Sigmundsson is a fine La Roche. I still find it hard to really grasp what the role of the Count brings to the opera, but Dietrich Henschel sings it well alongside Charlotte Hellekant's Clarion. All the performances really count here however in contributing to the rich fabric of the work.

Links: La Monnaie, ARTE Concert

Strauss - Elektra (Zurich, 2015 - Zurich)

Richard Strauss - Elektra

Opernhaus Zürich, 2015

Lothar Koenigs, Martin Kušej, Hanna Schwarz, Evelyn Herlitzius, Emily Magee, Michael Laurenz, Christof Fischesser, Reinhard Mayr, Hamida Kristoffersen, Alexandra Tarniceru, Iain Milne, Marion Ammann, Judit Kutasi, Julia Riley, Irène Friedli, Sen Guo, Ivana Rusko

Zurich - 3 July 2015

I had already seen Martin Kušej's production of Elektra for the Zurich Opera House on BD, and I've heard Evelyn Herlitzius sing the leading role impressively in Patrice Chereau's production for Aix-en-Provence in 2013, so I thought I had a good indication of what to expect viewing from this performance at the 2015 Festspiele Zurich. The introduction of Herlitzius into the production, some minor adjustments to the direction, and Lothar Koenigs' conducting of the Zurich orchestra however changed everything.

Well, perhaps not everything, but there was a considerable adjustment of emphasis that changed the whole tone and mood of the production. What I recall principally from the BD recording of the Zurich Elektra in 2005 is Eva Johansson's characterisation of Electra as a moody teenager. She might be slight in stature, but that kind of characterisation was never going to work with the rather more intense kind of performance that Evelyn Herlitzius brings to this role. The moody teenager in the yellow hoodie is replaced by a more sinister edge of dark violence in the 2015 revival of the production.

I've seen Elektra performed many times and have often been struck by the sheer force of the score, particularly in a live environment, but until now I don't think I realised just how dark a work it can really be. In Elektra, Richard Strauss has surely composed some of the most violent music ever written. Other than Reimann's Lear, I can't think of anything else that compares. That wasn't what I expected from this particular production, but under Lothar Koenigs' direction, you could feel it reverberate right through to the bone. What is there in the music and in its performance however has to be matched on the stage in order for that kind of impact to be fully felt.

I've seen Herlitzius sing Elektra before and I've heard Herlitzius sing live before, but I've never heard her sing Electra before in live performance. I've never noticed her vibrato so pronounced as it appeared when she sings her first lines in the opera. It's not so noticeable when it's more fully enveloped in Strauss's score, and when it is the combination of her voice with the score creates an extraordinarily powerful, chilling and almost terrifying expression of potential violence.

Expressionistic it might be, but Elektra is far from abstract in its violent intent, and that needs to be reflected in the direction. In this revival, Martin Kušej's direction becomes one that sheds a light on the pervading madness. That's there in the set design to some extent, in the undulating ground, in the masses of semi-naked figures twitching like inmates of an asylum, and in the padded doors that open to let the light flood into those dark corners. Padded on the outside however, this is not just a representation of the inner mind of Electra. What comes out more clearly in this revival is that the madness extends to her murderous, tormented family.

Such is the intensity of Electra's desire for revenge on the murder of Agamemnon that you almost think that the arrival of her brother Orestes is a necessary delusion, one that comes as she topples over the edge into her dance of madness. You soon realise however that there's just as much dysfunction between Chrysothemis and Electra, between Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and between Electra and Orestes. They way they behave with each other is all wrong, there's something dark and twisted in each of them that is emphasised and brought out strongly in the score. You look at this production and it really brings it home. What a family!

Evelyn Herlitzius is utterly convincing. The way she pushes the pitch and climbs to those high notes isn't the prettiest, but the torment of Electra's condition isn't the prettiest either. A measure of that, and of the emphasis that it is given to the family relationships in the production, is with the intensity of how she cries out the names of Agamemnon and Orestes. You can almost feel her cries pinning the audience back in their seats. She sustains that performance consistently in line with the intent of the production throughout, and it's just gripping.

Hanna Schwarz shows that there is some vulnerability in the domineering Clytemnestra, and Emily Magee sings Chrysothemis in a way that indicates that she is no voice of reason. With equally intense, disturbing interpretations by Christof Fischesser as Orestes and Michael Laurenz as Aegisthus, this was a very strong cast that played to Lothar Koenigs' conduction with maximum impact, with not even the Brazilian dance troupe lessening the crushing inevitability of all of them heading to their destruction.

Links: Opernhaus Zürich

Strauss - Daphne (La Monnaie, 2014 - Webcast)

Richard Strauss - Daphne

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels 2014

Lothar Koenigs, Guy Joosten, Iain Paterson, Birgit Remmert, Sally Matthews, Peter Lodahl, Eric Cutler, Tineke Van Ingelgem, Maria Fiselier, Matt Boehler, Gijs Van der Linden, Kris Belligh, Justin Hopkins

La Monnaie Internet Streaming - October 2014

Richard Strauss' late one-act 'bucolic tragedy' Daphne (written originally as an unlikely companion piece for Friedenstag) is as musically sumptuous and rich in melody as any post-Elektra Strauss opera, but it has to be said that it is a very dry mythological subject that inspires such beautiful music. Directing Daphne for La Monnaie, Guy Joosten attempts to enliven the work with some contemporary relevance, but in the end, it's the visual extravagance of Alfons Flores set design and some gorgeously lyrical singing that ensures that the production suitably matches the shimmering beauty of the score.

It's not too difficult to see what differentiates the treatment of mythology in Daphne and the preceding opera Der Liebe der Danae from the likes of Elektra and Ariadne auf Naxos, and that's the difference between librettists Joseph Gregor and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Gregor was a writer, historian and classicist, while Hofmannsthal is a poet and an artist who was capable of drawing out challenging and experimental themes from the subjects for Strauss to respond to in his music. It's particularly noticeable where passages of Daphne resemble scenes from Ariadne auf Naxos, the former having none of the edge of the latter's juxtaposition of opera seria and opera buffa, and none of the deeper exploration of the sentiments that this conflict draws out.

There is at least a strong division of sensibilities to work with in the mythical story of Daphne from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Essentially, it's a conflict between nature and order, or the world of nature and the world of man. Daphne is a child of nature who has grown up in close relationship with a laurel tree. She's suspicious of social order and conventions, refusing even to dress up and join in the celebrations for Dionysus that is the excuse for wild revelry and excess among the shepherds and fishermen. Her pure nature also makes her draw away from the declarations of love of the young shepherd Leukippos. Apollo himself appears, disguised as a herdsman, seeming to offer a love that is more pure and in touch with her feelings, but Daphne eventually shies away from his advances too.

In Guy Joosten's production, the contrast between Daphne's child of nature and the world of man is put across - and unnecessarily overemphasised perhaps - in a manner that quite literally depicts her as a tree-hugger in conflict with an economic banking system. It's a system that suggests order and prosperity, but in reality it's on the brink of collapse through its worship of technology, money and its indulgence in excess. It's not a particularly subtle commentary on contemporary society, but it is a meaningful way to define the distinctions at conflict in the mythological tale. The way that it is presented however, and how the resolution to the dilemma of Daphne's position is arrived at by the all-important conclusion, is nonetheless effectively delivered.

The conclusion is a beautiful one - particularly as it is scored by Strauss - but dramatically it can still be rather dry. It's handled very well here however in the modernised production that pushes the concept a little further. Apollo's anger at his rejection and betrayal by Daphne result in the death of Leukippos and an almost cataclysmic upheaval of the "system". That mainly takes the form of little more than a set of stairs that buckle and put the lights out on all the city dealing, but Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree is somewhat more elaborately staged in a way that would appear to have broader meaning - or at least come closer to the impact Strauss is aiming for.

Rather than metamorphose into a tree, Sally Matthews' ecological warrior climbs the huge thick-trunk tree that looms over the stage throughout and seems to merge into it. This is achieved though projections that then see the tree consumed in a huge conflagration that is less pastoral symphony and closer to the end of times conclusion of Götterdammerung, giving the work a broader sense of nature in the end reasserting its authority over man-made attempts to control it. It might seem to be stretching the purpose of this slim one-act opera into something as ambitious as a Ring cycle and I'm not convinced that conductor Lothar Koenigs captures the transcendent beauty of the transformation music, but seen in this light, the Late Romantic Wagnerian influence that persisted in Strauss' writing through to his latter works does seem more evident, and the idea seems to work.

The primary reason that the story works effectively at all is of course down to how Strauss scores those key scenes, and much also depends on how well it's played and sung. Sally Matthews might not be quite as silky-voiced as some Strauss sopranos, but there's force there and passion that suits Daphne. Her lament for Leukippos is almost devastating, fully bringing out all the pain of her character and the aching beauty of the score. It helps considerably that you feel for both Leukippos and Apollo too, particularly since they are so beautifully sung here. Eric Cutler's Apollo combines a heldentenor quality with a beautiful light lyricism and warmth that fits the Strauss/Wagner qualities of the score. Peter Lodahl's Leukippos has an even brighter timbre that is sweet and expressive. Iain Paterson and Birgit Remmert are also notable as Peneios and Gaea.

Link: La Monnaie - De Munt

Berg - Wozzeck

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2013

Lothar Koenigs, Andreas Kriegenburg, Simon Keenlyside, Angela Denoke, Roman Sadnik, Kevin Conners, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Wolfgang Bankl, Scott Wilde, Matthew Grills, Dean Power, Heike Grötzinger

Staatsoper.TV Internet steaming - 6th October 2013

It's hard to know how you should feel or quite by what criteria you judge the performance of any Alban Berg opera. Wozzeck, Berg's only completed opera (Lulu's third act remained unfinished at the time of his death), should I suppose be a painful experience and should gradually beat you down much in the same way that life does for its protagonist. The music too is by no means comforting or easy to listen to, but neither is it inaccessible or "difficult" in the way that Lulu's 12-tone serialism can often be. As a reflection of the drama, it's dark and unrelenting, and so too is the Bayerische's 2013 production directed by Andreas Kriegenburg and conducted by Lothar Koenigs.

Part of the problem with knowing quite what to make of Wozzeck and its protagonist undoubtedly stems from the fragmentary nature of the episodes in Georg Büchner's original unfinished manuscript. Wozzeck, we are told in the introduction to the Bayerische's production, is a good man who is ground down by the system, by the brutality, ignorance and hypocrisy of other people, by poverty, misery and illness, by life in general. But is he a good man, is he an innocent or is he simply a disturbed individual? It's difficult to tell, since he reacts angrily to Marie's infidelity but remains outwardly impassive to what goes on in relation to the abuse and exploitation of his nature and character by the Captain, the Doctor and the Drum Major. Until obviously, it all becomes too much and he finally cracks...

If there's any indication then just what the inner nature of Wozzeck is, it must be found in Berg's music. Here you have his personality, his confusion and his building anger, all in a way that makes rather more sense of the eventual violent release of his frustrations. And, yes, it tells you that Wozzeck is at heart a good man. Berg's music is a rich combination of sounds, melodies and voices, a genuinely free experimental attempt to redefine the structures of operatic language outside of the constrictions of the traditional or indeed the atonal language. There are no restrictions, old is mixed with new, the three acts of five scenes are each described as 'Character Pieces' (Act I), a 'Symphony in Five Movements' (Act II) and 'Six Inventions' (Act III) that employ a variety of musical forms and styles to cover the whole range of the subject. It truly is music in service of drama and character, not in service of music itself.

If a production engages with it in the way that it ought to, it should achieve the full impact of Wozzeck's terrible sequence of dramatic events. The three acts played straight through without intermission Andreas Kriegenburg's production and Harald B. Thor's sets unquestionably achieve that. Under predominately monochrome lighting the locations are almost invariably within damp, dank and misty and silver-blue moonlit settings capture the utter darkness and misery of the situation. They also give some indication of Wozzeck's mindset and even give premonitory hints of his eventual fate - Wozzeck spending most of the time with his feet soaking as he plods across the waterlogged stage.  There's practically no colour, the production team resisting the urge even to splash some red around.  There's a brief flame at one stage, but no sunsets and no blood.

You would however expect the stage and lighting to depict a rather dark and grim picture, so what is notable about the Bayerische's production is its division between interiors and exteriors that don't so much coincide with Wozzeck's actual location as to whether his mind is locked-in or outwardly expressive (and even then, his outward expressions are still somewhat dissociative). There is also a slightly greater role given over to Wozzeck and Marie's son, who remains mostly within the boxed room detached from the watery floor space that the others occupy. He is mostly silent but paints words on the wall on occasion ("Papa, Geld!, Hure" - Father, Money! and Slut) that heighten the sordidness of the situations and indicate that the child is not untouched by them.

All of this works with the nature of the work itself and doesn't over-complicate the character of the music or the singing performances which are just as vital an aspect. Again you can hardly judge the singing performances for their beauty of expression, but there are nonetheless great demands placed on all the performers and they cope well. Simon Keenlyside has considerable experience in the role of Wozzeck and is performing the role in several other productions this season. His performance here is, not unexpectedly, deeply intense, conveying as much through his posture and bearing as he does through his expressive singing. Angela Denoke is just as impressive as Marie, a thankless role of a character that is scarcely any less put-upon than Wozzeck, but this is a strong production all round, with the Bayerische's regular company singers all putting in solid performances as the work's gallery of grotesques.