Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser (Bayreuth, 2019)
Bayreuther Festspiele, 2019
Valery Gergiev, Tobias Kratzer, Stephen Gould, Lise Davidsen, Elena Zhidkova, Stephen Milling, Markus Eiche, Daniel Behle, Kay Stiefermann, Jorge Rodríguez-Norton, Katharina Konradi
BR-Klassik streaming - 25 July 2019
Not for the first time I'm watching the opening of a new Wagner production at Bayreuth and wondering what the hell has this got to do with the opera. Usually you can at least relate the idea or concept even tenuously to some of the familiar themes of the work, but over the overture Tobias Kratzer's production of Tannhäuser opens with a film of a motley group of wayward circus entertainers doing a runner at a petrol station, running down a police officer in the process. It's this incident, rather than any deep conflict about the nature of his art, that inspires this production's Heinrich to return to that great institution of the musical arts. No, not Wartburg, but Bayreuth.
And therein lies the clue that the production is not so much concerned with the fate and condition of the exiled artist who chooses to set himself up in opposition to conservative notions of musical, social, moral and religious order and instead chooses to explore a personal and profane voyage of the discovery of physical pleasures, but rather it's more of an self-mocking reference to Wagner creating a cult for himself and setting up Bayreuth as a kind of shrine for pilgrims to come in worship every year. There's even a joking reference in the opening film to the closing down of the Biogas plant that was the setting for the last (equally mystifying) Bayreuth production of Tannhäuser that this one is replacing.
It's certainly very much within the Bayreuth ethos - certainly since Katharina Wagner took over the running of the festival - not to treat Wagner's works with sacred reverence, but to continually challenge and question the master's works to see whether they still have contemporary relevance and can withstand a modern outlook. It's rather impressive to see that while some of the ideas, philosophy and nationalistic sentiments can seem outdated, the works always seem to touch on other fundamental matters, not least this central ethos of the role of the artist as a vehicle for challenging and questioning the prevailing social order.
Kratzer's hugely irreverent production doesn't initially seem to have much to offer on that front, and it probably doesn't help that Valery Gergiev's conduction of the overture sounds - in the broadcast performance of the premiere - very erratic in its pacing, rushing through it and smothering melodies. If anything, the crazy bunch careening in a camper van on their way to Bayreuth (their motto from RW - "Frei im Wollen, frei im Thun, frei im Geniessen" - ""Free in your desiring, free in you action, free in enjoying") seems like an open provocation on the nature of the Regietheatre, the team consisting of a dwarf Oskar, a black drag artist Le Gateau Chocolat, with Venus in a sparkly jumpsuit and Tannhäuser dressed as a circus clown. How the pilgrims, seen here in evening dress fanning themselves with programmes on the green hill, are going to react when this mob intrude is at least going to be interesting.
And interesting, rather than anything profound or revelatory, is indeed how it plays out. Act II opens with projected backstage footage of nervous performers preparing for a more traditional, conservative period production in as austere meeting room of Wartburg. The nerves around Heinrich's return seem to be over concern about his abandonment of the sacred tradition for the heresy of the anarchic madness of Regietheater. While the singing contest is going on and going south, Venus and her motley crew - Le Gateau Chocolat in an outrageous yellow puffball outfit - are seen climbing in a window of the Bayreuth theatre to add a further unwelcome intrusion upon the solemn festival proceedings (making fun of portraits of James Levine and Christian Thielemann on the way). Katharina Wagner is forced to call in the police.
It's certainly possible to explore Tannhäuser for more meaningful connections to contemporary situations, so Tobias Kratzer's production feels somewhat self-indulgent, but it's certainly amusing. And, if you consider the true spirit and range of Wagner lies in in something like Die Meistersinger von Nurnburg (essentially a superior reworking of Tannhäuser), where it leavens its solemnity with humour and true human feeling as well as with a spirit of anarchy, then this production does find a way of removing some of the more troublesome outdated principles and sanctimony for 'die holde Kunst' that can often get in the way of the true power and spirit of this work. Act III in particular is beautiful here, the transformation not some religious miracle or glorious sacrifice, but also there in Wolfram learning from Heinrich's inspiration and briefly winning the love and respect of Elisabeth, the conclusion downplaying the transcendence for what is real and human.
The production appears to hit its mark quite successfully. There's huge applause after Act I and Act II, with only audible boos at the conclusion, and most of them appear to be for Valery Gergiev. That's perhaps predictable, Gergiev not the most popular figure internationally for his support of Putin, but it's probably more politically motivated than any commentary on the musical performance. Despite the rather wayward overture - perhaps struggling to keep up with the on-screen visuals - Gergiev's account of the work is well-judged, harnessing the power of the work and not afraid to let its occasional bombast work in favour of the revised perspective. At the same time he captures the contrasting moods of the singing contest well, finding good expression for the deeper conflicts within Heinrich and Tannhäuser, the opera.
Whether you look at it as an in-joke or something celebratory, it's not a particularly thought-provoking Tannhäuser, but it is at least well-performed and entertaining. Elena Zhidkova, apparently standing in at short notice as Venus, gives a spirited performance that is a sheer joy, as is Lise Davidsen's soaring and beautifully controlled Elisabeth. Stephen Gould's Heinrich is generally solid, a little stretched in places, showing some nice interpretation and acting in his performance. Stephen Milling's and Markus Eiche are both reliably good in familiar roles as Landgraf Hermann and Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Bayreuther Festspiele, BR-Klassik
Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung
Bayreuth, 2016
Marek Janowski, Frank Castorf, Stefan Vinke, Markus Eiche, Albert Dohmen, Albert Pesendorfer, Catherine Foster, Allison Oakes, Marina Prudenskaya, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Stephanie Houtzeel, Christiane Kohl, Alexandra Steiner
Sky Arts - 31 July 2016
You couldn't by any stretch of the imagination ever call Götterdämmerung anti-climatic. As the final part of one of the most ambitious works of opera ever written Götterdämmerung is nothing but climatic on an epic scale, but it can still often feel like a bit of a chore to sit through after the long haul of Siegfried. As controversial and divisive as Frank Castorf's Bayreuth Ring production has been, the prospect of this Götterdämmerung however is an intriguing one. If the finale of Siegfried is anything to go by, you know it certainly won't be climatic in the conventional sense, but it's certain to have many more surprises and insights into the Ring as a whole.
And sure enough, straight from the first scene, the three Norn maidens are not terribly mystical agents of time and wisdom, but Macbeth-like witches dressed like bag-ladies. Back in what seems to be Castorf's East Germany, the Norn ladies cast spells and spin visions at the back lot of a tenement block, just around the corner from Hagen's Gibichung-managed kebab emporium. It's wonderfully sinister and atmospheric at the same time however, as it perhaps can't help but be with Wagner's writing at its most ingenuous and musically creative. Bringing the gods down to earth - established in Das Rheingold as much as in Die Walküre - is again to the fore in Götterdämmerung, as of course is the famous climax that we are heading towards.
It's in this down-to-earth place that we also find Brünnhilde and Siegfried. Traditionally legends perched on a rock surrounded by fire, they are depicted here sitting on a bench outside a mobile home like an ordinary couple. And as far as love, jealousy and betrayal are concerned, they are an ordinary couple, much like Wotan and Fricka in Die Walküre, with the same balance of power, authority and propensity towards infidelity. If they have extraordinary powers of Wagnerian proportions, it's the Tristan und Isolde-like power of love that makes this pair giants. There's no need for mythologising as far as the production is concerned. The audience need to be fully cognisant of the realities involved and danger that can be caused by ordinary people wielding extraordinary power - particularly the power of love - and the kind of devastating damage they are capable of inflicting upon others.
The characterisation of Siegfried established in the previous evening's opera is carried through to its natural conclusion in this regard in this Götterdämmerung. He's still new to these emotions, he's somewhat undeveloped because of his sheltered upbringing, and doesn't have real experience of the world or women. As he demonstrated in Siegfried though with the reforging of Nothung however, he's a fast learner. How many politicians in the world today, people with power 'out of touch with the electorate' display the same characteristics? If there's any one message to take away from Castorf's specific reading of the Ring, it's this; beware of those on whom we confer power believing them to be better than ourselves and capable of wisely exercising such power on our behalf - they are mortal and as prone to human weakness and failings as you or I.
Brünnhilde's outlook is no more mature than Siegfried's in this new relationship. A scene as simple as the disgraced Valkyrie waving the Ring under the nose of her sister Waltraute to make her jealous is amusing, but it ties into the deeper forces that are in action and in conflict with one another. This "pledge of love", this little piece of bling, is her slice of power and to her it is worth "more than the heaven of Valhalla, more than the glory of the gods". All of us will pay the price for such delusions and displays of pride, and by setting this scene to Waltraute's warnings of the approaching crisis, Wagner highlights them all the more forcefully.
As does the director in his management of this and other such scenes and confrontations. True to form, the conclusion indeed fails to 'ignite' in a familiar fashion as Castorf prefers to keep things 'real-world', throwing out more references to oil (the black gold), to East Germany and to the New York Stock Exchange without making any attempt to join it all up in a bombastic or overly simplistic message. To be honest however, while Castorf fully explores Götterdämmerung as much as the other parts of the Ring and presents those ideas in a fashion that is much more fun and diverting than most other representations, a large part of the success of this work, for the still extraordinary force of the conclusion and for the success of the entire production as a whole, has much to do with the quality of the musical and the singing performances.
It was interesting to hear Marek Janowski speaking before the Sky Arts broadcast of the performance and admitting that he pays absolutely no attention to the stage direction. You would think that ideally a successful production of the Ring would need those two elements working hand in hand, but Janowski's own sense of dramaturgy in the music is just fabulous and speaks for itself. The fact that Casforf has a strong sense of dramaturgy too is a bonus, and even if the two views might not coincide, both in their own way connect with the essence of Wagner's intentions. This Götterdämmerung is consequently one heck of a ride.
The singing also holds up to the extreme challenges of the final installment of the Ring cycle. We don't have John Lundgren's superb Wotan as a firm foundation in this work, and Stefan Vinke's Siegfried is perhaps not as big a personality or a voice to replace him, but the tenor manages well nonetheless in a work that has slain many lesser Siegfrieds. Catherine Foster however remains a dramatic and strongly characterised Brünnhilde, one with real personality and tenderness, who remains sympathetic through the dark machinations of the Hagen-plotted Gibichung drama. Her delivery of the final scene, in conjunction with Janowski's conducting and Castorf's direction, is extraordinarily good and intensely moving. Marina Prudenskaya also puts in an intense and touching performance as Waltraude as does Marcus Eiche in a surprisingly sensitive Gunther, but there are no weaknesses in any of the roles here.
Regardless of what you feel about Frank Castorf's production of the Bayreuth Ring, it's one that likely won't be forgotten soon. I would go further and say that it's one that I'm sure will set a new benchmark standard that subsequent cycles will find hard to match. Aside from the sheer spectacle of the sets and the fine musical and singing performances, there is a deep exploration of the work here that applies many of its principal themes to relevant contemporary issues and concerns. A more minimal or 'straight' version that isn't able to offer as thorough an exploration/dissection/deconstruction of the work and doesn't continue to inventively apply its real-world message to the rapidly changing circumstances of our world today will undoubtedly find this a hard act to follow.
Richard Wagner - Das Rheingold
Bayreuth, 2016
Marek Janowski, Frank Castorf, Iain Paterson, Markus Eiche, Tansel Akzeybek, Roberto Saccà, Sarah Connolly, Caroline Wenborne, Nadine Weissmann, Albert Dohmen, Andreas Conrad, Günther Groissböck, Karl-Heinz Lehner, Alexandra Steiner, Stephanie Houtzeel, Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Sky Arts - 26 July 2016
Frank Castorf's controversial production of Bayreuth's current Ring cycle may look far removed from the traditional mythological settings of Wagner's epic, but in reality it's closer to home and to the intent of the work than you might think. At heart, the central theme of the Ring that purity of intentions in relation to politics and power (if there even is such a thing - now there's mythology for you) is often corrupted by the imperfections of what makes us all human comes as a timely reminder of where we are in the world today and how we've got there. I haven't seen any Ring cycle even remotely as relevant and powerful as this in the last few decades.
Although Castorf sets the Ring's opening prelude music-drama Das Rheingold in a motel on Route 66 in the USA (and subsequent parts are equally global in their locations), a German or European audience would easily recognise the parallels it has to much that has taken place recently in Germany and in Europe in relation to power and politics. It wouldn't happen until long after his death, but Wagner's vision of the fall of the gods and the flawed human forces that replace them would be borne out by later historical developments. Without making any direct reference to a period that is loaded with controversy, Castorf makes a daring parallel that extends the purity of Wagner's idealised dream of a united nation into the corruption of those ideals by Hitler. It's almost as if Wagner could see it coming.
So uncomfortably close to home is that subject that Castorf is forced to bury it in layers, but rather than obscure the intentions of the Ring, the layers instead build upon it and prove its validity. It might be hidden behind a parody of the corruption of the American Dream in Das Rheingold, but such is the strength of Wagner's framework and vision that a German audience might recognise a similar dream closer to home in the reunification of East and West Germany or in the dream of closer European union. Regardless of whichever level you relate to it, Castorf's production is one that cuts through the mythological trappings and makes the subject of power and corruption, gods and humans really meaningful and relevant in a way that hasn't been seen since Patrice Chéreau's production at Bayreuth 40 years ago.
For all the lengthy expounding over 18 hours or so of the Ring cycle, the questions of purity of motive and intention (whether socialist or capitalist) being quickly subverted for the love of power and money is established fairly quickly in Das Rheingold (to such an extent that I've always felt that there are limited returns from the lengthier subsequent works - but maybe that's just me). A small man fed up of toiling in an underground cavern, the dwarf Alberich here wakes up in this production on a sunbed at a motel and is unable to resist the lure of the glamorous Hollywood starlet Rhinemaidens relaxing by the pool. He soon abandons any hope that the rich bathing beauties might slum it with him and instead decides that he can do much more with the vast quantities of gold they possess. Off he runs with it, hoping to turn it into a product that will benefit the workers only to become someone who later exploits them, corrupted by the power of wealth and promise of influence.
Meanwhile, the god Wotan and his wife Fricka (enjoying a threesome with Fricka's sister Freia) are in temporary accommodation at the motel while the builders are in. His dream is about to be realised (a grand statement that testifies to his dream of a making a nation great again through reunification). He's so busy admiring the view of his creation from his hotel room that he has forgotten that it needs to be paid for, and the Giants have arrived as heavies presenting the bill. The threats of the purity of his family being corrupted (Freia) by these thuggish foreigners he has used as cheap labour is more than he can bear. Having been told by Loge of the vast quantities of Rhinegold stolen by Alberich, he's prepared to exploit the Dwarf's weaknesses and appropriate those riches for the greater good (himself). Loge takes pleasure in playing with his lighter to ignite those flames and it's done significantly in the proximity of a petrol station.
Further backed into a corner over how he rules, the 'human' failings, the personal and domestic problems of this god/politician/leader/artist/ industrialist/genius composer all too soon unravel any noble intentions he might once have had. The supposed infallible omnipotence of the gods is coming to an end as all giants - gods or human - are inevitably destroyed by the corruption of office, the trappings of power, the lure of money or just indulgence of personal lusts and drives. Wagner's Ring however is more than just an allegory and has many other elements to highlight and explore - love, honour, family - but even within itself it can be seen to be an equally flawed creation (its composer too) with its inflated self-importance. All of this however reflects the inherent problem in man's ambition to assume power for a personal ideology.
Castorf's production not only deals with those larger themes in an elaborately constructed revolving motel/poolside/petrol station forecourt designed by Aleksandar Denić - one that touches on some big American themes - but it is sensitive to the complexities of Das Rheingold and the Ring, using cameras and screens and other familiar imagery ingeniously to explore and illustrate the text, subtext and nuances of a work that is too often overlooked in favour of Die Walküre. Castorf shows (or convinces me anyway) that Das Rheingold is the key work in the cycle, one that establishes the tone to be followed, one whose roots and leitmotifs will go on to be developed later in other ingenious ways - but the whole heft of the work is already contained in this opening masterpiece. All too often smothered in mythological trappings and the ambition of conductors and directors as a work more concerned with gods than mortals, rarely has the richness of all the qualities of Das Rheingold and its meanings been so openly exposed and laid bare. This is just brilliant.
Its ambitions are matched by the quality of the musical performance under Marek Janowski. It establishes a tone and detail that allows Frank Castorf to make full use of the rich cast of characters, singers and actors who go some way towards bringing Wagner's masterpiece to life and endowing it with personality. I wasn't totally convinced that Iain Paterson has the personality to carry Wotan but he does however create a great double act with Roberto Saccà's brightly lyrical Loge. Sarah Connolly sang well although Fricka seemed to get lost a little in all the goings-on. She should assert herself more convincingly later. Elsewhere all the roles were wonderfully entertaining and fascinating in their characterisation, notably Albert Dohmen's Alberich, Günther Groissböck and Karl-Heinz Lehner's Giants and Markus Eiche's Donner, but even down to the Rhinemaidens all these wonderful creations just breathed life and exuberance and this Bayreuth Das Rheingold was consequently one of rivetting drama full of meaningful portent.
Links: Bayreuth Festival
Giacomo Puccini - Manon Lescaut
Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015
Alain Altinoglu, Hans Neuenfels, Kristine Opolais, Markus Eiche, Jonas Kaufmann, Roland Bracht, Dean Power, Christian Rieger, Ulrich Reß, Christoph Stephinger, Petr Nekoranec, Evgenij Kachurovsky, Okka von der Damerau
Staatsopertv
While it's always interesting to see what the Bayerische Staatsoper come up with in their efforts to reinvent and revitalise familiar opera works, sometimes I think they try too hard and end up missing the point. In the case of Hans Neuenfels' productions, the approach is undoubtedly well-considered, purposeful and usually has something meaningful to say about the works themselves, but it rarely does the work any favours. In the case of Manon Lescaut, the attempt to explore and comment on the work itself seems to miss the main point that opera is to provide dramatic as well as musical coherence. And entertain. Much of those vital aspects were missing from the new Munich production.
Then again, although it is rapidly finding its way in recent years into the Puccini canon and has undoubted merits, Manon Lescaut is far from perfect and has evident musical, dramatic and structural flaws. It's infuriatingly lacking in any kind of through narrative and, set as a number of almost standalone acts that make it more Scenes from Manon Lescaut, there are huge gaps in the narrative that lead to inconsistent characterisation. It's structured much like La Bohème then, but Puccini would make up for it there with the most extraordinary arias, melody and melodrama. In Manon Lescaut, you rely on either knowledge of the Abbé Prévost original or - more likely - you can fill in some gaps from familiarity with Massenet's more satisfying version of the work, Manon.
Most obviously and fatally, there's a whole act missing between Act I and Act II of Puccini's version. Des Grieux and Manon run away to Paris after their meeting at the end of Act I. Act II then starts with Manon established as the mistress of Geronte. There's no scene to show the brief period of happy poverty of her time in Paris with Des Grieux that becomes so important a bond that it brings them back together and persuades Manon to (almost) give up her life of luxury in Geronte's apartment. It's alluded to but never shown, making what follows - not least the bizarre out of nowhere Act IV scene of them dying in the Utah desert - much harder to relate to or piece together.
Considering that there is nonetheless some terrific music and situations even within this mangled adaptation of the story, most productions and directors tend try to make the most of it and strive to give it a greater coherence. Not Neuenfels. His production seems to follow my own personal dissatisfaction of the work by following it to the letter and letting it stand in its own imperfect state. The bare minimalist stage for Act I, for example - lit only by a box-like neon frame - shows the characters and the setting as something unsubstantial and vacant. Act II gains nothing much more than trinkets in a room with no walls and a floating ceiling, with chorus figures and secondary characters dressed and behaving absurdly. By the time we get to Act IV in the desert, the stage is again completely bare.
According to Hans Neuenfels, his production is an attempt to reach an "emotional truth", but it seems more of a commentary on the weaknesses of the work itself than an attempt to mitigate against its failings. It also seems to either ignore the deeper "emotional truth" in Puccini's musical compositions, or else - and it's a valid response - doesn't find them to hold any real emotional content. I don't think the latter is the case, personally, and I don't really think that's what Neuenefels believes either. It's true that the orchestration and the Romantic sweep can be hugely overwrought, never really making the connection with the characters that you will find (arguably) in later Puccini works, but Neuenfels isn't consistent in his approach where the set design seems to be at odds with the musical and singing performances.
Alain Altinoglu recognises and gets across all the rich colour of Puccini's score, hammering out all its overblown dynamic and force, but it lacks subtlety. That's obviously as much as a failing with Puccini on this particular work, and you could argue that Neuenfels' minimal staging is an attempt to under-compensate, but it does leads to an uncomfortable disjoint between the music and the characterisation. The singing unfortunately isn't able to do a great deal to strike a balance between them. Kristine Opolais is a fine singer, but she doesn't have the size of voice that is required to fill out Manon's character across the range. She can't compete with Jonas Kaufmann in terms of volume evidently, but it's more than that. Unsupported on a bare stage, without Antonio Pappano's more sympathetic conducting to give her more room, those weaknesses are more evident here than in the recent Royal Opera House production opposite Kaufmann.
Jonas Kaufmann is of course still incredible, his performance just about flawless, and he's still clearly just about the most gifted tenor in the world today. He has the power to sing Des Grieux like every note of Puccini comes from a deep, meaningful place, even when it doesn't, which is the case in this insubstantial production. There's a sense that Neuenfels recognises that a credible Des Grieux might be the key to making Manon Lescaut work. Passages from his point of view are quoted at length between scenes and acts, but it's not really enough to make up for the lack of coherence in the approach elsewhere. This is exemplified beyond any question by the lack of emotional connection that results in the intense melodrama of Act IV's death scene in the desert. If that doesn't hit you hard, something has gone badly wrong somewhere, and once again Manon Lescaut fails to convince.
Links: Staatsoper.tv
Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser
Bayreuther Festspiele, 2014
Axel Kober, Sebastian Baumgarten, Torsten Kerl, Camilla Nylund, Michelle Breedt, Markus Eiche, Kwangchul Youn, Lothar Odinius, Thomas Jesatko, Stefan Heibach, Rainer Zaun, Katja Stuber
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Always controversial in their revisionist approach to Wagner's legacy, the 2014 Tannhäuser is fairly typical of recent Bayreuth productions. The stage set is constructed out of a number of independently created art installations that were never created with Wagner's opera in mind. If it isn't a perfect tailor-made fit then for the ideas and themes in the opera, much less the stated settings, it does however form an interesting dialectic that encourages the viewer to see the work in a new light, and is somewhat successful in how it informs and puts across the all-important musical aspect of the work.
Director Sebastian Baumgarten's idea is to bring together several art installation pieces by the artist and sculptor Joep van Lieshout. These pieces, with names like Alcoholator, Disciplinator and Technocrat, are processes that produce a 'biogas', the whole system forming a kind of working model for the cyclical human and bodily processes that generate life and, by extension, art. Which, if you look at it broadly and in the abstract, is more or less what Tannhäuser is about. It's not enough to simply follow the old stage directions, and reverential literalism is by no means the philosophy of the current Bayreuth administration. They are aware that Wagner's works must be constantly scrutinised in order to remain relevant, but the balance between real significance and pretension is always hard to maintain.
If you want to look at the theme of Tannhäuser on a more simplistic level, it's about the co-dependency of physical and the spiritual. Even then it has to be acknowledged that the work is a little more complicated than that. There is also an outlook on society as a whole, on the role of the artist, and of course it's all tied up in Wagner's own complex and contradictory impulses, political vision and developing philosophical outlook. Baumgarten's Tannhäuser follows a similar path to Hans Neuenfels' laboratory experiment 'rat' Lohengrin for Bayreuth, viewing the work as a model of society, taking in Wagner's perspective and extending it to a more modern outlook. It's not so much trying to update it or make it fit as use it as a means to revisit the work and explore whether it really has something new to inform our view of the world we live in today.
Baumgarten of course doesn't simply just use the installations as a backdrop. There has to be consideration given to how the drama and the music interact with the set design. It's an impressive construction, if initially bewildering, the stage filled with stage hands who operate the machinery, regulating and monitoring the meters that convert the liquids and solids into biogas, cleaning-up the mess it creates. These processes extend way beyond the musical performance, starting while the audience take their seats and continuing through the intervals. There even seems to be a mass for the operators taking place on the stage in-between acts. The audience too are given a place in the interaction of the installation and the performance, with a number of them seated to the sides of the stage.
I'm not sure that the director really manages to draw anything new out of Tannhäuser, but it does encourage anyone who thinks they are familiar with the work to reconsider more deeply what it is about, and question whether those contradictions and inconsistencies within it aren't actually essential to its purpose. It does at least, I find, explore the characters in greater detail, and not just Tannhäuser, but also Venus and Elisabeth and the relationships between them. Wolfram von Eschenbach also comes out of this production with a role that suddenly seems more significant, but it seems to me that as much of the strength of the characterisation here is also down to how it is performed.
Whatever you make of the Bayreuth stage production, musically it's a glorious affair that does open up the work and reveal new qualities. It's not a forceful, driving traditional Wagnerian interpretation of Tannhäuser, but one that finds the true delicacy and poignancy within what is surely the most Romantic of Wagner's works on the misunderstood, suffering, exiled artist as national or social hero. Alex Kober's conducting of the orchestra is outstanding and the chorus are superb, as they really have to be in this particular work. There's not a trace of heavy-handedness, yet all the force and dynamic of the work is there, measured and applied in such a way that it works hand-in-hand with the production.
The singing likewise is never forced. I thought at first that Camilla Nylund was underpowered here as Elisabeth. Knowing what she is capable of, it sounded like she was conserving her voice, but the more gentle delivery and the colour that Nylund is able to apply actually pays dividends with Elisabeth and her nature here. This is also borne out in the performances of Michelle Breedt's Venus, but particularly in Markus Eiche's excellent and impressive Wolfram. The complex character of Tannhäuser is another matter however, and requires a different approach. Torsten Kerl achieves a good balance between the more lyrical side of his character and the Romantic heldentenor, his performance also covering all the playfulness, bawdiness, irreverence and the more serious, spiritual as well as the vainglorious sides of the character.
The Opus Arte Blu-ray release presents all the colour and brightness of the busy Bayreuth stage very well. Spread over two BD50 discs, there is the option to view the musical performance alone or, if you've an hour or so to spare and are interested in the set as an art installation piece, you can view it interspersed with all the extra performance art set-pieces in-between. Audio tracks are PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1, both giving an impressive full uncompressed true HD sound. The interviews on the disc and in the booklet provide much more useful information about the concept. Subtitles on the disc are English, French, German and Korean only.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Pique Dame
Wiener Staatsoper, 2015
Marko Letonja, Vera Nemirova, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Tómas Tómasson, Markus Eiche, Barbara Haveman, Marjana Lipovsek, Elena Maximova, Thomas Ebenstein, Sorin Coliban, Benedikt Kobel, Janusz Monarcha, Clemens Unterreiner, Aura Twarowska, Caroline Wenborne
Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 28 January 2015
It's probably not a coincidence that Tchaikovsky's two most popular operas, Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades), are both taken from works from Alexander Pushkin. Tchaikovsky would take creative inspiration from several other sources in his operas and ballets and find a certain Russian character in them, but there's a pure Russian Romanticism in Pushkin's work that clearly appealed to the composer and inspired his most successful musical dramas. It's Eugene Onegin that presents grand Romantic sentiments in their purest form and they are expressed with great yearning in Tchaikovsky's score, but Pique Dame finds other Russian characteristics tied to similar themes that Tchaikovsky also successfully translates into music.
Gambling is one such device that is used in Russian literature to express the extravagant Romanticism of the Russian soul in the abandonment of oneself into the hands of fate. It's there in Dostoevsky in 'The Gambler', and it's there in Niikolai and Doholov's card games in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'. In most cases, it's more than just a device, gambling a very real Russian problem that almost destroyed Tolstoy in real life. In the case of Hermann in The Queen of Spades, there's a similar 'all or nothing' attitude to his gambling, that will either be his salvation or destroy him, and it's inextricably linked (or is just another manifestation of the deeper gambler/Russian psychology) in Hermann's feelings for Liza.
Hermann knows he has no hope of his love for Liza being acknowledged, much less reciprocated. She's engaged to marry a handsome officer, Yeletsky, but Hermann throws himself at her mercy nonetheless. "Decide my fate!", he pleads, or blackmails, since he's holding a gun to his own head as he confesses that he cannot live if she refuses him. For her part, Liza is not indifferent to Hermann's declarations. On the contrary, she herself is fatalistically attracted to this mysterious dark figure who she has seen watching her from the background. There's plenty of room then in this alone for an Anna Karenina-like mutual rush to self-destruction, but Pushkin's story has another element that raises the stakes.
Pique Dame attaches such already heightened sentiments to what is essentially a ghost story. Hermann in his despair believes that Liza could never marry him because he isn't rich like Yeletsky. In his all or nothing frenzy, Hermann is prepared to pay whatever price is necessary, and the only option is gambling for the highest stakes. Aware of the legend of the three cards that surrounds the Countess, an infallible sequence of winning cards that can only be revealed to "one impelled by burning passion" (that's Hermann all right). Once a great gambler herself, known as the Queen of Spades, revealing the secret would however mean her death. In the event, it's only after her death at the hand of Hermann, that her ghost reveals the three cards that will seal his fate.
There's tremendous drama for Tchaikovsky to get his teeth into here, but Pique Dame is - for the most part, I find - surprisingly tame in its scoring. Pushkin's original work is a short story and benefits from its concision, but Pique Dame - even though it is imaginatively expanded with considerable colour - tends to dilute the intensity of the original. Tchaikovsky undoubtedly extends the Russian character of the work with choruses, a drinking song, a gaming song and a pastoral Intermezzo 'The Tender-hearted Shepherdess', but the most successful passages of the opera are those that relate to the ghost story and the passions of Hermann and Liza.
It's those aspects that also work best in Vera Nemirova's direction for the Vienna State Opera. Nemirova's production has no time for the usual Russian clichés and sets the work, for some unknown reason, in what appears to be an orphanage. This avoids the period trapping of wealth, privilege and position, the children looked after in the opening not by nurses and nannies, but by care workers. The orphanage building is also used throughout for interiors and exteriors, but it has a suitably ghost-like monastery appearance that suits the mood. Likewise avoiding old social trappings, the Intermezzo at the fancy-dress ball looks more like a showgirl cabaret here.
It's all reasonably moody and effective, particularly the apparition scene. In terms of distinctive directorial touches, there's nothing too outlandish attempted. The old Countess, for example, is not killed with a gunshot, but in the killing embrace of Hermann as a lover driven to the extremes of passion. Hermann raping the old lady introduces a much more desperate element to the work, tells us more about the mindset of Hermann, and actually fits with the warnings surrounding the revelation of the secret of the Legend of the Three Cards to one "impelled by burning passion". Similarly, Nemirova's bringing Liza's body back on the stage at the conclusion is a strong touch that brings home the impact of Hermann's choices and actions.
Marko Letonja's conducting of the work in Vienna was fine, but he was unable to ring any genuine emotion out of the cool calculation of the majority of Tchaikovsky's score. There are of course moments of great dramatic tension however, and those were built up well. The singing was strong from a good cast. Aleksandrs Antonenko can likewise be a little cool and steely but he grew greatly in intensity along with the role, never letting it tip over into full-blown insanity. After Hermann, it's the Countess who is the most charismatic personality here, and Marjana Lipovsek was just perfect here. The Countess is aloof and graceful, dismissive of fussy retainers, but she has to show fear and vulnerability, as well as regret for the past. Lipsivsek's performance could hardly be bettered. Barbara Haveman's Liza was also excellent, utterly commanding in Act III, and Elena Maximova supported her well as Polina.
The Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home
in HD season continues in February with broadcasts of TOSCA, ANDREA CHÉNIER, DON CARLO and an EDITA GRUBEROVA gala concert.
Details of how to view these productions in the links below.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video
Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Die Tote Stadt
Finnish National Opera, 2010
Mikko Franck, Kasper Holten, Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, Kirsti Valve, Markus Eiche, Sari Nordqvist, Kaisa Ranta, Melis Jaatinen, Per-Hakan Precht, Juka Riihimaki, Antti Nieminen
Opus Arte - DVD
Written when he was just 23 years of age and first performed in 1920, the high Romantic notions conflating love and death are particularly evident in Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt - The Dead City. The Liebestod-like sentiments are expressed in Wagnerian fashion with an underlying Straussian Salome-like discordance, but what is notable about Die Tote Stadt is how it takes these ideas to even greater levels in its consideration of the underlying psychology or even pathology of his main character through dreams fantasies and impressions. The formal challenges of representing this in a production of the work then are considerable, but so too is the technical virtuosity of the orchestra and the singers to express this often difficult work. Both elements however are handled exceptionally well in this 2010 production from the Finnish National Opera.
Much like Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo', which follows a similar dysfunctional character who attempts to recreate his dead love in another person and relies very much on the varying tones and labyrinthine character of San Francisco and its outlying locations, Die Tote Stadt is a psychological study that is connected very closely with the nature of a city, in this case Bruges. You could say that this aspect is somewhat over-emphasised in the libretto, Paul noting that "the dead woman, the dead city... there's a mysterious bond between them" and Brigitta quoting Paul as saying "Bruges and I, we are one, we worship the most beautiful, the Past", but this is just one element in a deeper conflict that Paul has to reconcile between the past and the present, between the living and the dead, between an ideal and the reality.
Just as Paul's home then is a shrine to his dead wife Marie, so too he sees Bruges as a city of the dead, a monument to those who have lived before, the memory of the past being desecrated by the living. Whether this needs additional emphasis or not, Es Devlin's designs for Kasper Holten's production emphatically puts both Paul's room and the city, as a reflection of his inner mindset, right up there on the stage. It looks terrific, the room expressionistically designed with oppressive angles, littered in an obsessively organised fashion with pictures, portraits, mementos and shrine-boxes dedicated to Marie. At the back, tilted, but almost at right-angle to the stage, a vertiginous section of the city is revealed, bearing down on Paul.
Two other elements of the production and the stage design are relevant to this expression of Paul's mindset. One is the large bed in the centre of it all, which indicates on the one hand that much of what goes on is a dream in Paul's head and on the other hand it reflects much of Paul's repressed and misplaced urges. Much like Stefan Herheim's psycho-sexual study of Wagner in his Bayreuth Parsifal, where figures similarly emerge from beneath the sheets, there's a sense of guilt and corruption that Paul here associates with the sexual act, unable to reconcile the pure memory of the dead Marie with his feelings for the sensuous dancer Marietta. The other element helps make this problem more concrete by using an actor to play the ghost of Marie, having her present on the stage with her lookalike Marietta. It may not be called for, but it does make Paul's dilemma all the more real.
If there are any questions about Kasper Holten employing such techniques, they are at least borne out in how they fit with Korngold's musical arrangements for Die Tote Stadt. Musically, the opera doesn't follow any straightforward formal structure or narrative but follows its own chromatic muse, blending styles and working with a fragmentary montage of songs and waltzes, switching from lush orchestration to discordance according to the ecstatic reverie or the the tormented state of its protagonist. Wagner and Strauss may be the antecedents of this style, but there's a commonality here with Puccini, particularly the impressionistic style of Il Trittico and his latter works, and an awareness of cinematic structures which Korngold would develop later through his years in Hollywood.
The opera is consequently highly demanding of its performers, particularly the role of Marietta, which is pitched at the level of a Straussian soprano. Camilla Nylund has everything that is required here, the range, the stamina, and a necessary beauty in the colour of timbre and expression. She is simply phenomenal. This is a great performance. Klaus Florian Vogt's high sweet tenor might not seem like the ideal voice for the equally challenging role of Paul and he does struggle sometimes at the lower end of the tessitura. He brings a glorious soaring quality however to those ecstatic moments and a sense of vulnerability to his character that is not there, for example, in Torsten Kerl's strident singing of the role on the 2001 Opéra National du Rhin recording.
The Opus Arte release of the Finnish National Opera's 2010 production is released on DVD only, spread across a 2-disc set. The source is certainly not HD, but even in Standard Definition the image quality is somewhat disappointing, lacking real clarity and even appearing to be a little juddery in its NTSC transfer. It does however represent the light, colour and detail of the darkened stage production reasonably well. The LPCM stereo and DTS Surround 5.1 audio tracks don't have the depth of a high resolution recording either, the music not really lifting out or revealing the detail and colour of the orchestration, but that could also be down to the performance which doesn't seem to express the full quality of Korngold's lush score. The only extra feature on the disc is a Cast Gallery. Subtitles are in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
