Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Das Wunder der Heliane
Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2018
Marc Albrecht, Christof Loy, Brian Jagde, Sara Jakubiak, Josef Wagner, Okka von der Damerau, Derek Wetton, Burkhard Ulrich
Naxos - Blu-ray
Like many other German and Austrian works that were categorised as 'degenerate' Entartete music by the Nazis in the 1930s, Korngold's early operas have as a consequence been consigned largely to obscurity. That is undoubtedly unfair, as the banning of such works had little to do with any kind of musical discrimination or value judgement and everything to do with whether a composer was of Jewish origin or had Jewish family connections. The neglect and loss of such works and any legacy they might have had could however also have as much to do with them being out of touch with changing musical tastes and the reality of people's lives on the ground.
The near-eradication of such works from music history may not be so much to do with the labelling of such music as degenerate as much as the operas and their themes being rather too 'decadent' in subject matter at a particular juncture in history when the world was about to plunge once again into war. Korngold's operas would certainly fit in with the decadent fantasies that seemed to flourish around this period. With fairy-tale worlds peopled by ambiguous figures and wrapped in lush chromatic orchestration, Richard Strauss, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold relished delving freely into a dark core of madness and forbidden lusts that had been unleashed post-war in the new century.
If they don't reveal any great psychological insights, works like Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die Gezeichneten and of course Korngold's Die tote Stadt are nonetheless fascinating and exquisitely beautiful works that are very much the product of their (short-lived) time. So too it transpires is Das Wunder der Heliane (Heliane's Miracle), another Korngold masterpiece that has been largely neglected or deemed irrelevant to the development and progress of 20th century opera. Composed in 1927 with a trial at its centre, there's a sense even that Das Wunder der Heliane challenges itself in response to such conflicts, if only within the world of opera. Are you willing, it seems to ask, to sacrifice the beauty of Romance for a harsh, unyielding, joyless life without magic and love in it?
That seems to be the choice open to the Stranger, imprisoned for bringing a message of joy and light to a land where love and laughter are forbidden. The King, a stern and embittered figure who has never even known the love of the Queen, visits the Stranger in his cell to tell him that he will stand trial and face execution for his frivolity. The Queen, Heliane however proves to be more yielding to the Stranger's outlook, offering him her hair, her feet, her mouth and then her nakedness, but not her body. The King, going back to plead with the man to ask him how to win the love of the Queen, is outraged when he discovers her naked with the Stranger.
That's the first highly charged Act of Das Wunder der Heliane, the subsequent two Acts setting these forces against one another, leading to the death of the Stranger in Act II and his 'resurrection' at the miraculous intervention of Heliane, whose goodness and purity allows them to consummate their love in death in the finale of Act III. There doesn't appear to be much Wagner or Schopenhauer influenced philosophical underpinning to this pseudo-mystical Liebestod, just throwing out the idea of beauty, purity, love and light as the true enduring force in the world, even stronger than death.
If there's any way of making a credible case for this idea, it's in how Korngold smothers any philosophical shortcomings with persuasive swathes of strings, harps, 'seraphic voices' and all manner of celestial instrumentation. Who could resist or deny that there is indeed something miraculous and otherworldly in the music at least? If anyone can convince you of the argument of Das Wunder der Heliane, it's Korngold's orchestration at his most extravagant. It's rather like Strauss in this register - full-on, rich and complex, underscoring high emotion with soaring crescendos.
Like Strauss it also places exceptional demands on the singers, who not only have to be capable of the stamina to handle its technical complexities, keeping up with the continuous augmentation of musical emotions, but also rising above it and making it feel like it comes heroically from the heart. I haven't come across American tenor Brian Jagde before, but he is supremely capable of bringing all that to the role of the Stranger, in thrall to love and beauty. The rush of 'pure' lusts inspire him to soar to incredible heights in his Act I scene with Sara Jakubiak's Heliane that culminates in her revealing herself fully to him. The singing with the orchestration and the charge of the chaste eroticism reaches everything that Korngold could wish to achieve in a scene like this.
Christof Loy's direction doesn't try to compete with the charge that is already there, but his directions certainly help bring it about. It's almost impossible to sustain that kind of charge and tie it into further miraculous associations between love and death (although Tristan und Isolde - clearly the major influence on this work - of course proves otherwise), so Loy aims for a more sober set design, setting the drama in a courtroom inspired by Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution, with dark classical wooden panelled walls and no unnecessary adornment or effects. As is often the case with Loy, he seems to give a problematic work the best possible presentation that highlights its strengths and mitigates against any weaknesses, and he does it with some style too.
Korngold's score also demands a certain flair and Marc Albrecht is an experienced conductor in this field. To judge purely on impact, the whole character of Korngold is there, distinct from Wagner, Strauss or Schreker, using unconventional instruments in an idiosyncratic way to achieve similar effects. The demands are not just on the principals then but the whole cast and there are consequently impressive performances from Josef Wagner as the distraught and furious King, Okka von der Damerau as the king's Messenger, Burkhard Ulrich as the Blind Judge and Derek Wetton suitably otherworldly as the Gatekeeper. This is a hugely impressive and revelatory production in every respect of a neglected Korngold rarity.
Recorded live at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 2018, Das Wunder der Heliane is given a superb presentation on Blu-ray disc by Naxos. The HD image is good, but evidently the real benefit of the format is in how it gets across the power, complexity and detail of Korngold's majestic score in the high resolution DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 soundtracks. The spread of the surround track gives a more immersive experience, while the 2.0 track is more direct and powerful, particularly on headphones. Korngold specialist Brendan G. Carroll provides an introductory essay in the booklet, and also some items from his own archive on the disc, including an 8-minute recording from 1928 of the Act III Zwischenspiel and a picture gallery of rare photographs, posters and images. The BD is all-region compatible and there are subtitles in German, English, French, Japanese and Korean.
Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos
Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018
Marc
Albrecht, Katie Mitchell, Lise Davidsen, Eric Cutler, Sabine Devieilhe,
Angela Brower, Huw Montague Rendall, Jonathan Abernethy, Emilio Pons,
David Shipley, Beate Mordal, Andrea Hill, Elena Galitskaya, Josef
Wagner, Rupert Charlesworth, Petter Moen, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin,
Maik Solbach, Sava Vemić, Paul Herwig, Julia Wieninger
ARTE Concert - 11 July 2018
For
a work that I used to consider a bit of a one-note meta-theatrical joke
confected as a compromise to a failed theatrical/operatic crossover,
Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos has continued to enjoy popularity and
stimulate a variety of interpretations. It shouldn't be that
surprising, because at its heart the work is precisely about how art as
entertainment (and particularly opera) has a unique way of connecting
with people to express and communicate a rich variety of life
experiences.
And if that's not enough there's always the
music of Richard Strauss, gorgeous and alluring in its own right, as
well as forming a bridge between the words and the deeper intentions of the
work; like Capriccio, making a clever self-referential commentary at
the same time on its working methods and intentions. Director Katie Mitchell is also used to working with divisions between form and content
and trying to find ways to bridge them in her stage productions. One
other divide you will also find Mitchell tackling is the male/female
divide in classic works, seeing to offer a 'corrective' to their
traditional male-dominated bias. How will Ariadne auf Naxos stand up to
such scrutiny?
A one-note joke or not, there is a
certain boldness in how Ariadne auf Naxos turns its gaze on the process
of opera and performance, in how it marries popular entertainment with
high art, and it's obviously necessary for that marriage to be seen to be
successful and mutually beneficial, but certain structural and
ideological weaknesses remain that need to be addressed. Regardless of
whether you agree with or find musical value in Strauss and
Hofmannsthal's somewhat nostalgic neoclassical idealisation of opera's
past, and some of the reactionary attitudes towards men and women that
persist within it, there is at least the structural disjoint in Ariadne
auf Naxos's division between Prologue and Opera.
Forced
to adopt this as a fix after the failure to pair the operatic element
with Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' in the original 1912 version,
the two parts don't sit perfectly well with one another either in the
reworked 1916 version. Once the Prologue is out of the way, the dispute
between the artists and the entertainers over how to simultaneously
present their different perspectives because of the whim of the Richest
Man in Vienna resolved by compromising artistic integrity for
commerce, the meta-theatrical framing is largely forgotten about. Even
though the contrasting dialectic remains at the heart of the work, it
does tend to forget its original audience (the guests of the Richest
Man in Vienna) and seems to start taking itself rather seriously
presenting itself to the 'real' audience as a neoclassical drama/music
theatre revue with a grand Wagnerian ending.
You could
look at that as intentional, as the work itself taking on its own
artistic life, removing itself from the framework of the craft, from the
personalities and problems of its creation to become something that
relates directly to an audience without any necessity of explanation or
commentary, and if so, it's another level of cleverness. It does tend
to make the intention of any director seeking to insert another level of
remove or abstraction on the work rather more difficult, but it has
been done, most successfully I believe in Katharina Thoma's 2013 Glyndebourne production.
Katie Mitchell's response to the work, in collaboration with Martin
Crimp, doesn't seem to have quite as much to offer.
The
immediate intention of their Aix production seems to be to make that
divide between creativity and creation visible again, but also to show
how they are brought together through an audience. It's a worthwhile
endeavour, certainly central to the premise of opera, and in the process
Mitchell and Crimp also find a way to draw the Prologue back once again
with the Opera. Rather than remaining invisible in this version of the
opera, since they don't have any part to play in Ariadne auf Naxos (or
'Ariadne auf Naxos'), the Richest man in Vienna, his wife and guests
remain seated throughout in this production to the left of the stage
while the players perform for them on the right. Occasionally, they
make comments on the performance (a role they performed in the first
version), and in one or two places are drawn in to participate or get
closer to the drama. When the opera finishes, it's indoor fireworks
that are set off and the performers put on their party hats and take a
bow to their on-stage audience. It brings the work full circle in a way
that Strauss and Hofmannsthal neglected to do and for which they could
be justifiably be criticised.
That's fine as far as it
goes, but obviously Katie Mitchell will have other issues with Ariadne
auf Naxos as it stands, not least of which is the pomposity that is
allowed to remain in the performance of the opera seria part of 'Ariadne
auf Naxos'. Whether you agree that Strauss got carried away and
forgot about it supposedly being a pastiche, it's clear nonetheless
that the musical composition is much more considered than clever,
Strauss fully aware of the variety of musical forms and techniques
employed and how they interrelate with the drama. What is harder to
swallow is how men and women are depicted, where the women are waiting
for a man, "a new god", who even though he may be unfaithful is better
than nothing and necessary to deliver them from their loneliness and
misery. It depends how you play it obviously, and with how much tongue
in the cheek.
Katie Mitchell is obviously not going to
have any of that, or leave any room for ambiguity. In her version,
Ariadne is pregnant, and it's the delivery of the baby - which takes
place on-stage - that is the birth of a new god, Bacchus. Where this
leaves the real Bacchus in the opera I'm not entirely sure, he could be
Theseus returned or Hermes, the messenger from the Gods who delivers her
this 'gift'. It's very much one of those feminist twists that Mitchell
can employ that seem unnecessary and don't always work terribly well
(Miranda, Lucia di Lammermoor), but here I liked how it deflated the
grand Wagnerian sweep accompanying the woman finding her man. The
playing out of the drama within a dining room instead of a desert island
also helps in that regard, reminding you that it all remains a
theatrical construct.
Some of it works and some of it
doesn't, but what works and what doesn't will obviously depend on the
individual viewer. The role reversal dressing of the richest man in
Vienna in a dress and his wife in a suit felt gratuitous and unnecessary
to me, and I felt that Zerbinetta's role and the risk of her appearing
to be a bimbo may have been underplayed, allowing the Ariadne storyline
to dominate, but the "discussion" between Zerbinetta and the Composer in
the Prologue is touching, all credit to Sabine Devieilhe and Angela Brower. What really makes it come alive here however is the fine
musical performance of the Orchestre de Paris under Marc Albrecht,
playing down the propensity for the work to seem overblown or just too
damn clever, finding instead the incredible variety of expression within
it.
That incredible variety also extends to the singing
roles in Ariadne auf Naxos, and the cast assembled here are outstanding.
Lise Davidsen is not the most natural actress, but less can be more
for Strauss, particularly when you can express everything so well
through the voice. Davidsen is just superb, carrying gravity and a
commanding vocal presence that is just extraordinarily rich and
expressive in her hold and control and swelling of a line. Sabine Devieilhe doesn't have quite the same volume but is an appropriately
flighty and bird-like Zerbinetta, and always impressive. If her
presence isn't given the same stature in Mitchell's production, she
remains dignified and 'luminous' in her eye-catching dress. Eric Cutler's Bacchus may also be given shorter shrift here, but his singing
is clear and lyrical. Angela Brower also makes a very favourable
impression as the Composer.
Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, ARTE Concert
Arnold Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder
Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam - 2014
Marc Albrecht, Pierre Audi, Burkhard Fritz, Emily Magee, Anna Larsson, Marcus Marquardt, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder is an unusual piece that is difficult to classify, but it's also a work that it is difficult to associate with one of the most radical composers of all time. Gurre-Lieder uses a Romantic musical language that is not typical of the Schoenberg who would shake up the old traditions with serialism, yet it comes at a time when the composer was already moving away from the traditional musical forms. Orchestrated like an opera, Gurre-Lieder certainly doesn't fit easily into the song-cycle, cantata or oratorio format, but neither would it appear to have the dramatic qualities for an opera. For a work that nonetheless remains one of Schoenberg's best known and most performed works, it's surprising that no one has attempted to adapt it to the stage until this 2014 production at the Dutch National Opera.
The fact that there is no clear narrative form to Gurre-Lieder might however work in its favour when it comes to presenting in on the stage. There are no predetermined stage directions to be adhered to and there are no preconceptions about how the work ought to look and be presented. There might be a few clues in its origins, references and the period it derives from, but a director is free to make whatever they want of the songs, the sentiments and the arrangements. Whatever images Gurre-Lieder with its grand, lush orchestration might have conjured in the mind previously however, it's unlikely to be anything like the setting that Pierre Audi devises for the Amsterdam stage.
As abstract as it might appear there is clearly an effort made by the director and the music director to get inside the work's complicated life, its history and period, at the same time as it tries to illustrate what there is of Gurre-Lieder's sparse storyline. Based on a German translation of a series of poems written in 1900 by Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen, the Gurre-Lieder recount the affair and the consequences of the love of King Waldemar for a young local girl called Tove. Amidst premonitions, laments and mourning, Tove dies at the hands of Queen Helwig and Waldermar loses his mind, imagining summoning an army of the dead to avenge her death before he too expires in a blaze of remorse.
...Or something like that. To be honest, I've never really paid much attention to the lyrical content of Gurre-Lieder's Romantic meditations and expressions, which is probably why it's such a good idea to try and put the work across visually in dramatic terms. Pierre Audi's concept works in at least giving the listener something to think about in this dimension of the work, even if it still proves difficult to hold one's attention and derive any deeper meaning out of the verse. It's not great storytelling, but it can be evocative, dramatic and poetic, particularly when it is combined with Schoenberg's gorgeous post-Wagnerian musical compositions.
And post-Wagnerian, neo-Romanticism is very much the tone here in terms of subject and execution, so it's not surprising that Audi's production reflects that to some extent. The staging and subject (more so than the music) evokes gothic imagery that you might expect to find in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, there's a fatalistic love affiar that is reminiscent vaguely of Tristan und Isolde (in this case the music leads more towards the comparison), while the lush orchestration and fairytale elements can put one in mind also of Strauss's near contemporary Die Frau ohne Schatten, a work that also draws heavily from the period, from the thinking and art movements that were developing and cross-pollinating in Vienna at this time.
If there's one overall consistent theme as such that the DNO production applies as a concept for representing the work on the stage, it's perhaps this idea of great change. That's applicable to the age the work was composed in as much as to the great change in musical forms that Gurre-Lieder heralds. There's a nightmarish quality to the production that comes with this fear of death, the end of one era and the beginning of another. The anxiety particularly affects Waldemar, but the premonitions of the Wood Dove and the raising of a dead army all carry a fearful edge. Schoenberg's glorious choral finale of the rising sun on a new day certainly holds out promise for the future, but with Waldemar dying, there is a certain ambiguity there. The sun will still rise regardless and change will come, for better or worse.
There might not be anything particularly revelatory here, but the stage production does represent the essence of the work and, at the very least, it invites the listener to consider anew what the work is about much more so than a more conventional concert performance would. Marc Albrecht's conducting of the piece also benefits from these visual cues and highlights the very particular variety of musical language that Schoenberg uses in the work. The singing is perhaps not quite strong enough to carry over those huge orchestral forces, but Burkhard Fritz is wonderfully lyrical as Waldemar, Emily Magee impresses as Tove and Anna Larsson stands out as the Wood Dove. The other roles have the same Romantic lyricism and are well handled by Marcus Marquardt and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. The DNO chorus are, needless to say, mindblowingly good, which is a distinct advantage for the impact of this work's finale.
The chorus are indeed the main focus of the extra feature on the Blu-ray disc. DNO productions on Opus Arte releases always include an excellent interview/making of feature on the background to the production and rehearsals, and this one is well worth viewing. There's also a Cast Gallery and an informative essay on the work by Gavin Plumley, along with a brief synopsis in the enclosed booklet. The HD image and sound options are superb, really putting across the qualities of the production and the performance. The singing is mixed a little low in the DTS HD Master-Audio 5.1 mix, but there's a better balance and perhaps more impact in the LPCM stereo mix.
Links: DNO
Richard Wagner - Parsifal
Dutch National Opera, 2016
Marc Albrecht, Pierre Audi, Anish Kapoor, Ryan McKinny, Bjarni Thor Kristinsson, Günther Groissböck, Christopher Ventris, Bastiaan Everink, Alexandra Petersamer, Elena Pankratova, Marcel Reijans, Roger Smeets, Lisette Bolle, Rosanne van Sandwijk, Erik Slik, Jeroen de Vaal, Maartje Rammeloo, Lisette Bolle, Inez Hafkamp, Tomoko Makuuchi, Caroline Cartens, Rosanne van Sandwijk, Eva Kroon
Amsterdam - 9th December 2016
Parsifal is such a unique piece of music drama that it permits many ways of presenting it; there's no right way and there's no wrong way. It has little of the dramatic action that you would more commonly find in opera and is limited in the stage directions it needs to put its message across, so it's surprising how versatile and open to exploration Parsifal remains. The conceptual, symbolic or abstract approach however seems more like its natural medium, rather than say a production that explores character or one that attempts to provide an interpretation of the meaning of the work. Other approaches are valid however, which of course is a measure of its greatness as a supreme work of art, which seems to me to be something that is indisputable.
That was my impression anyway coming out of the Pierre Audi's production of the work at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, which suggests that they must have got something right. Just quite how they did it is, as is often the case with this opera, somewhat more difficult to define, but surely it is at least by remaining true to the spirit of Wagner's intentions for his final masterpiece. That doesn't mean that you have to be slavishly literal however, and Pierre Audi's direction and Anish Kapoor's sets are firmly in the conceptual mode. By which I mean that they attempt to create a visual representation of the deeper meaning of the work rather than holding to its surface representation. And by which I mean there is scarcely any overt religious iconography, but plenty to allude to the work's spiritual and transcendent content.
That very much depends on how much you want to read into it, but obviously when it comes to such an approach, the onus must be placed on the individual member of the audience. For me, the representation of Montsalvat as a solid mass of jagged rocks bathed in blood-red light gave it the appearance of a raw open wound. That is evidently a key image in relation to this opera, and in fact it's also the image of a bleeding wound that is projected onto the screen during the overture. The pain and suffering endured by Amfortas, an eternal wound from the spear that that pierced Christ on the cross, is so great that it can't simply be confined to a single body; it engulfs the whole of Montsalvat. Everyone there feels the pain, and if you can't hear that in the music, you aren't listening closely enough.
Arguably that is what the staging should be striving to represent by whatever means necessary. It's more important to sense that than it is to see medieval knights and the Holy Grail on the stage. The second scene of Act I, the transubstantiation scene, literally builds on the first scene. The configuration is slightly altered and wooden scaffolding around it bears the faithful. There's a sense here of the need to build the world anew, build upon the pain, putting it to use. The wooden beams picked up by the reinvigorated knights are not crosses then, but crossbeams that symbolise or serve as building blocks.
Anish Kapoor's designs for Klingsor's castle and gardens in Act II are even more abstract, consisting only of a large circular mirror of uneven distorted clarity hanging above the stage, the background of the set merely a curved black wall. Again, it's a representation of the tone of this Act, the world seen through a glass darkly (a Biblical reference without the religious iconography). Reflected in this mirror the flower maidens are indeed a dazzling kaleidoscopic display that holds Parsifal back from what it is he must do. Kundry attempts to bring some light to Parsifal's quest for enlightenment, but it still represents a distortion of the truth. It is only when Parsifal recalls the suffering of Amfortas that his eyes are opened and he is able to recognise the truth for himself.
Act III is the exact opposite of how this Act is usually represented. Instead of a post-apocalyptic Montsalvat, with Titurel dead, Amfortas surely unable to endure further pain, and the faith of Gurnemanz and the knights in tatters, Kapoor depicts a clean, open, ordered scene. It's all pale blue, with geometric shapes on a bare minimal stage, the figures all wearing futuristic robes like a scene from a Robert Wilson opera production (incidentally, I haven't seen his Parsifal, but Robert Wilson doing any Wagner and preferably a Ring Cycle would be my ultimate dream production - could someone ask him, please?). The third act however is about redemption, and that is followed through with the associated Christian rituals of feet-washing and baptism, as well as consideration of death and the afterlife.
If it was difficult to pin the production down to a definitive statement, concept or interpretation, there was no mistaking what the music was telling you, and it's there that the 'truth' of Parsifal is there to be revealed. Marc Albrecht conducted with a measured pace, never allowing the work to float or drift, keeping instead a consistent drive - although I might have liked a slower more contemplative Good Friday scene. It was the 'shaping' of the orchestra that counted for more here, lifting the sweeps of strings, emphasising the plaintive tone of the cellos and the spiritual uplift of the brass, with the percussion hammering home the truth. It was an utterly exhilarating performance that demonstrated the beauty and the brilliance of Wagner's orchestration for Parsifal, as well as its ability to reach deeper places.
The performance of the 9th December was slightly delayed while the DNO flew in a replacement for an indisposed Petra Lang. The disappointment of not seeing Lang sing and perform the role of Kundry was however alleviated by the promise of the replacement being Elena Pankratova, who most recently sang the role (impressively) at Bayreuth this year. Delays however prevented Pankratove from getting to the house in time so the first Act was sung very capably by Alexandra Petersamer from the side of the stage while the role was mimed out by the assistant director Astrid van den Akker. The circumstances were not ideal, but in practice it didn't have an adverse impact on the quality of the performance, with Pankratova at the side of the stage for Act II and III demonstrating every ounce of the power that marked her performance at Bayreuth. If anything, a mimed Kundry just gave her and the work an additional sense of otherworldliness.
Also seen at Bayreuth 2016, Ryan McKinny likewise gave another intense, agonised performance as Amfortas. There might not have been as much blood-letting as at Bayreuth, the 'Grail' here being a flow of blood onto a strip of cloth held in front of him for the followers, but the sacrificial nature of gesture counted. I was initially uncertain that Günther Groissböck would have the necessary gravitas for Gurnemanz, but he was more than capable for the role, his voice carrying even over the full force of the orchestra, and he had good stage presence.
Christopher Ventris didn't make the same kind of impression, but it's undoubtedly a challenge for singer and director to give Parsifal any real depth of character. He is a cipher, a symbol, a saviour who will lead the way through pain to redemption in compassion. There was no faulting his singing performance, which was nothing less than lyrical and beautifully articulated. Bastiaan Everink's Klingsor was similarly a cipher, but again well sung. The brilliance of the DNO chorus was truly astounding and deeply moving - reducing the lady beside me to tears at the end of Act I - and the flower maidens here were also exceptionally lyrical and beguiling.
Links: De Nationale Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte
Dutch National Opera, 2012
Marc Albrecht, Simon McBurney, Maximilian Schmitt, Christina Landshamer, Thomas Oliemans, Nina Lejderman, Brindley Sherratt, Iride Martinez, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Maarten Koningsberger
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
You can't really argue with Simon McBurney's approach to Die Zauberflöte in this production at the Dutch National Opera. The director recognises that a child-like simplicity is needed to present the fresh look on the enlightened world that Mozart and Schikaneder's work looks towards, but at the same time there's a need to avoid the danger of the message getting lost or seen as utopian if the production is played too much like a fairytale or pantomime. The difficulty is in how to achieve this simplicity without losing the magic that is also a necessary part of the work.
To his credit, Simon McBurney attempts to address this by relying on Marc Albrecht to supply most of the magic sparkle, since the real magic of The Magic Flute is, as its title suggests, in the music itself. He's not wrong, either in the concept or in its application. There is certainly a belief, convincingly made in Mozart's score, that art/music can lead to the betterment of man and perhaps even change the world, and Albrecht's conducting of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra is just gorgeous, revealing all the beauty and the blended sensibilities of the music and the detail in the instrumentation.
As good as the musical performance is, it's perhaps not enough to make up for the lack of variety of tone on the stage. As well as striking the right balance that makes the aspiration of knowledge and wisdom triumphing over base sentiments and superstition seem magical as well as attainable, it also has to appear noble and dignified, fun and desirable, as well as meaningful and relevant to today. Simon McBurney's production does touch on all of those aspects, if not quite to the extent that you are familiar with, and not quite in the right tone that you would expect. There is darkness in Die Zauberflöte, of course, but here that tone of the trials that Tamino, Papageno and Pamina undergo at times feels more like Kafka's 'The Trial', with an added low industrial clank and drone underlying the spoken dialogue sections.
The production's intention to go back to a childhood simplicity is aimed for here by giving the impression of a more freer 'live' and improvisational feel to the setting, without relying too much on traditional technology in the stagecraft. In reality, it's a little bit over-worked to really achieve that aim. The birds that Papageno hunts, for example, are not just represented by bird sounds, but with a dozen extras running around the stage flickering pages from the score. Conceptually, it's nice and ties into the musical theme of Die Zauberflöte well, but it feels like a lot of work for little benefit or impact. The same can be said of the use of a visible foley artist in a box at the side of the stage to create live sound effects.
Other aspects of Michael Levine's stage designs are similarly low-fi in technology terms, the main stage device being a platform that is raised and lowered as required. Costumes too have a grungy feel and seem to have little consistency. The 'naked' underclothes of the Three Ladies reflect their lustful desires, and Königin der Nacht's loss of power and influence can be understood as the reason for her being ancient and mostly wheelchair-bound, but (having seen this production before) I still haven't figured out why the Three Boys are also depicted as aged crones. What does work more effectively are the projections, the hand-drawn chalk titles effects and the magnified sets that use a bookcase for the temple of wisdom. These manage to give a sense of the work being created here and now, as well as giving the work the larger dimension it requires.
It's this kind of 'live' spontaneity that marks the production out and undoubtedly keeps it fresh. The measure of this can be seen in how the production has evolved from its first productions here at the DNO to its appearance at Aix-en-Provence in 2014, with London performances in between. The production is clearly more open than some others to adjustments or refinements depending on the site-specific needs and can be tailored to the strengths and abilities of different singers in these roles. Having seen the later Aix production, I'm not sure than any of the adjustments made have necessarily been improvements. The DNO stage production worked much better for me, but that could also be down to the nature of filming the performance, and this production is undoubtedly difficult to capture.
Pablo Heras-Casado's period instrument version of this production at Aix is one of the best versions of Die Zauberflöte I've ever heard, but Marc Albrecht's conducting of the larger-sized Netherlands Chamber Orchestra also has a wonderful lightness of touch that works perfectly with the singers and supports the production through those areas where it lacks the necessary mood and tone. The work is not smothered with sugary smoothness either, but achieves the same kind of spontaneity that the production aims for, but with additional sensitivity for those moods, with vividness, energy and delicacy according to the scene, although the pacing is not always what you would like. McBurney meaningfully exploits the interaction between the pit and the stage, having musicians from the orchestra step up to play the flute and the keyboard glockenspiel, as well as actors occasionally stepping down into the pit.
The singing is first-rate and perfect for the production. Maximilian Schmitt is outstanding as Tamino and perfectly matched with Christina Landshamer's Pamina, even if she doesn't quite sail through some of the more challenging parts of the opera. Both however have a lyrical sweetness, clarity of enunciation and good projection, giving lively performances. There's no high-powered singing here - with the exception possibly of Iride Martinez's strong Königin der Nacht - but everyone fits in with the delicate tone of the musical performance. If all the magic isn't there in the production design, the musical and singing performances nonetheless make this wholly as great as only Die Zauberflöte can be.
I would think this production would have been a difficult one to capture on video, and the HD transfer of the largely dark stage consequently isn't as impressive as you usually find. Technically however, there are no problems and all the detail is there. The audio tracks are marvellous, the singing clear, but the music in particular has a warmth and detail that reveals the beauty of individual playing. The usual DNO backstage feature on the production is entertaining and informative. The Blu-ray is region-free, subtitles are in English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese and Korean.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Legend of Invisible City of Kitezh
De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam 2012
Marc Albrecht, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Svetlana Ignatovich, Vladimir Vanseev, Maxim Aksenov, John Daszak, Alexey Markov, Mayram Sokolova, Morschi Franz, Peter Arink, Gennady Beszubenkov
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
At the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of Invisible City of Kitezh is an epic battle between the forces of good and evil that recounts the legend of the invasion of the city by Mongol hordes. The librettist for the work however, Vladimir Belsky, also brought Christian elements into the story from the legend of Saint Fevronya and from folklore that lift the work towards flights of spiritual mysticism and rapture. There's something of a gulf then between the realistic literal depiction of the horrors of war and the pantheistic depiction of nature that doesn't entirely come together in Rimsky-Korsakov's score, but in many ways it just makes it all the more fascinating. I'm not sure that either the conductor Marc Albrecht or director Dmitri Tcherniakov manage to reconcile the inconsistencies in the opera, but it remains a glorious, intriguing work.
The first thing to note about Tcherniakov's direction is that he changes the plot slightly in order, presumably, to highlight the contrasts in the work and perhaps find a way to bring them together. Consequently he invents an 'end of the world' scenario, where Fevroniya is not some holy fool who communes with nature in the woods, but has fled there because, in Tcherniakov's prelude description, "after what has happened on earth, life can never go on as before". The beautiful set consequently depicts a Tarkovsky-like post-apocalyptic spiritual view of nature seen in The Sacrifice, and it's one that is also well-suited to the Cunning Little Vixen quality of Fevroniya's oneness with nature, Fevroniya even dining with human versions of the crane, the bear and the auroch that are referred to in the libretto. The intrusion of the outside world in the form of the Prince Vesvelod who asks her to marry him still doesn't fit realistically however with the main body of the legend of the invisible city and the attack on it by the Mongol hordes.
The beautiful scenes at the beginning and the end of the work (Tarkovksy again looking to be the inspiration for the familiar boxed lighted rustic house/room that is a familiar feature in many Tcherniakov productions) do at least serve to bookend the highlighted ugliness of the central scenes of the drunken revelry of Grishka in Little Kitezh, the horror of the invasion of the Tartars and the lamentations of the citizens at the destruction that has been visited upon them. You couldn't really say that the director captures the majesty of the long central third act, relocating it from the Cathedral Square in Great Kitezh to a makeshift refugee camp, while the miracle of the invisible city heralded by the spontaneous tolling of the bells is reduced inexplicably to a flickering strip of neon. The scene is very much underplayed, but when you listen to the gorgeous musical composition and striking arrangement of this act, it is undoubtedly a scene that is problematic to stage.
The first scene of this extraordinary third Act for example has long Parsifal-like symphonic and choral arrangements, as Prince Yury, a gusli-player and the Page sing for the fate of the city and its people in mournful laments with folk rhythms with a sweep of shimmering symphonic strings. It's deeply mystical in its sentiments, evoking the city of Kitezh as a celestial paradise, a light in the impenetrable darkness, a spiritual "haven and a refuge to all who suffer, thirst and seek". The act is divided however by a symphonic battle in which Prince Vesvelod is killed off-stage, the second scene taking place on the shore of Lake Yar, where Grishka and Fevoniya are held captive by the Tartars. Grishka has led them to Great Kitezh, but he has blamed their new Princess Fevroniya for the betrayal.
The third act should be the dramatic turning point of the work, the one that contrasts and attempts to join the two stark and contrasting visions of the world, where the actions of the good and faithful in the material world of war and death will be rewarded in the afterlife (in Act IV). The drunken, bitter, trouble-making and traitorous Grishka's has no conception of any world outside his own small ugly little existence, and it's such a shock to Fevroniya that she even thinks he might be the Antichrist. Tcherniakov isn't able to bring the two views convincingly together, but - as beautiful and uplifting as the music is - it's debatable whether Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer opposed to the religious Wagnerian liturgical touches of Belsky's libretto, manages to reconcile them either. Despite this, and despite the staging attempting to undercut the mysticism further, the third Act is still wondrously operatic.
If it all does indeed manage to come together and even raise itself onto another plane by the final fourth act, much of it is to do with the singing and Rimsky-Korsakov's writing for the voice. There are no real arias in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, or overt folk dances and set pieces that you might find in other mythological works by the composer like Sadko or The Golden Cockerel. It's more through composed, with a Romantic sweep and even some Wagnerian quotes in spite of Rimsky-Korsakov's opposition. It's the naturalistic roll of the Russian consonants however, flowing out unstrained in long solid arioso singing and in glorious, glorifying choral arrangements that anchor the sentiments in the real world even as they achieve a level of rapturous transcendence.
The Amsterdam production is marvellous then in that it has the deservedly much-praised chorus of the De Nederlandse on fine form, but it also has a fine mostly Russian cast that give solid, unfailing performances throughout. They are led by the young soprano Svetlana Ignatovich, who fulfils every vocal and visual requirement for the saintly role of Fevroniya. The picture of innocence and strength, of faith and forgiveness, the completion of her transformation into martyrdom and sainthood at the end of the work is achieved with an ecstatic acceptance of her fate. Tcherniakov again downplays any elaborately literal vision of paradise much in the same way that Rimsky-Korsakov refuses to let the music push it too far (the direction of the orchestra under Marc Albrecht similarly restrained yet ecstatic, resisting the usual Russian bombast), but everything that needs to be expressed has been done so in the writing for the voices and in the performances here.
The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh is released on Blu-ray disc by Opus Arte and it looks and sounds impressive in the High Definition format. In addition to a Cast Gallery, there is the usual informative look behind the scenes at De Nederlandse in a short 20-minute featurette with interviews that hint at the conflicts between the music and the staging. The BD is region-free and subtitles for this release are in English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese and Korean.
