Puccini - Turandot (Madrid, 2018)

Giacomo Puccini - Turandot

Teatro Real Madrid, 2018

Robert Wilson, Nicola Luisotti, Iréne Theorin, Raúl Giménez, Andrea Mastroni, Yolanda Auyanet, Gregory Kunde, Joan Martín-Royo, Vicenç Esteve, Juan Antonio Sanabria, Gerardo Bullón

France TV Culturebox

Robert Wilson's very distinctive and largely homogenous approach to set design isn't suited to every opera. Looking right back to Einstein on the Beach in 1976, it's clear that his style tends to work better with abstraction and ritual movements rather than with drama and narrative, but even working with Puccini or Verdi the effect of his unique style can be simply stunning in its use of light and colour and in its sheer visual splendour.

Not relying on any real-world situation but on a fantasy fairy-tale Turandot would seem better suited to the Wilson style, the opening Act alone of Puccini's opera being itself almost an abstract expression of living in fear and terror. In Turandot, Puccini was pushing his craft as a composer, exploring a new progressive direction for Italian opera, an endeavour that was unfortunately cut short with the death of the composer, Turandot itself remaining unfinished, its promise tantaslisingly unfulfilled.

That character is described well in Wilson's direction of that remarkable Act I of Turandot, the familiar luminous gradations of cobalt blue tending to darker shades, towards purple and shadow. The light of the moon casts an eerie light over the executioner and his next victim and over the people of Peking who live in fear of the terrible reign of Princess Turandot. After that build-up, her appearance on the stage is as striking as only Wilson's visual language can achieve, gliding in high above the stage on a platform, imperious, static, a fiery or bloody red against the cool backgrounds.

Wilson's stagecraft then is at once familiar as it is expressive to meet the specific demands of this particular opera. As well as extending the palette of colours considerably, there is also an expansion of the visual language Wilson traditionally employs, using beams of light that mark out the horizontal earthly boundaries of the stage as well as vertical beams that descend from the heavens and have chaotic branch-like formations. Even Turandot arrives floating on a platform bordered with light.

Wilson continues to use a minimum of stage props - almost none - preferring to use moving block of panels to close down or open up the stage to the emotional undercurrents and dramatic actions. Movement too is reduced to minimal actions and ritualised gestures. Like his production of Madama Butterfly, there's no Orientalism other than in the costumes, which have more of a classical ceremonial aspect than anything traditional. Additional expression however is used for characters, an all-gray Calaf sings 'Nessun Dorma' to a network of tangled roots, Turandot characterised by blazing reds and a giant black moon.

Like Nicola Luisotti's musical interpretation, it places emphasis on the moody qualities and character of the work, its sinister oriental refrains adding an edge of discord to the proceedings. And in many ways, Wilson serves the score best by not competing with it or underlining it, reducing any distraction or interpretation and permitting the extraordinary qualities of that powerful music room to be revealed. There are less of the director's usual eccentricities - even Ping, Pang and Pong are rather restrained here - with the strangest twist being Liù's stylised standing death, walking off-stage to the praises of the people of Peking, making it tragic in its own way.

The singing in this Teatro Real production in Madrid is good considering how challenging a work this is for all the main performers, Turandot an opera that requires Italian lyricism with Wagnerian depth and stamina. Gregory Kunde comes out best, unfailing in his efforts and secure in his 'Nessun dorma'. Iréne Theorin's Turandot doesn't have the fullness of voice across the range, but is suitably commanding and impressive in her account. There are good performances also from Yolanda Auyanet's Liù, Andrea Mastroni's Timur and from the opera's Ping, Pang and Pong.

It may not be the greatest performances you've heard of these roles, but opera is not a singing contest and you have to take live dramatic performance into account, particularly when you're dealing with the very specific constraints of a Robert Wilson production. I don't see it as the most insightful interpretation of Turandot either (the completion of the work still never entirely satisfactory), but Wilson's unique vision certainly does justice to Puccini and Alfano's score, as does the full-blooded musical performance under the direction of Nicola Luisotti, creating a unique dialectic with Wilson extraordinary visual imagery.

Links: Teatro Real

Mozart - Don Giovanni (Royal Opera House 2014 - Blu-ray)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

Royal Opera House 2014

Kasper Holten, Nicola Luisotti, Mariusz Kwiecień, Alex Esposito, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Véronique Gens, Malin Byström, Antonio Poli, Elizabeth Watts, David Kimberg

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Mozart's Don Giovanni is a larger than life character. Not unrealistically larger than life, but truly a highly complex individual. You could write tomes of analysis on the character and still barely scratch the surface. Don Giovanni has been interpreted and psychoanalysed in countless productions, and every production somehow always seems to bring out another facet of his personality. Depending on the director and depending on the singer, Don Giovanni can be a rogue and a playboy; a heartless seducer of innocent women who is evil incarnate; or he can simply be a sensitive man who loves women too much; a charmer who women can't resist; a commitment-phobe who is unable to form attachments to any one woman when there are so many out there; women who fall for the rogue knowing full well that he will use and abandon them. Some might even foolishly believe they can change him.

Kasper Holten is undoubtedly aware of the complex nature of this colossus of the opera world and is certainly not the first to recognise that Don Giovanni is Don Giovanni - the opera is the man. That's not to say that the other characters in the opera aren't well developed. Like all Mozart's mature operas - and even some of the more youthful ones - the music is considered with attention to detail for even the smallest and seemingly most frivolous of secondary roles. Lorenzo da Ponte's development of character and plot meanwhile ensure that there's a dramatic consistency to the human interaction of every personality. Nevertheless, Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera is a huge figure who is unquestionably the centre and the driving force for the behaviour of every other person. His actions and the performance of the person playing the role determines the whole tone of the opera.

Mozart might have had one dominant character in mind when he composed for Don Giovanni - the work according to Mozart's own description of it is primarily a comedy - but his writing and Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto leave a lot of room for interpretation. A whole lot of room is needed for a figure like this, and Kasper Holten consequently uses the whole of the stage of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. In Es Devlin's designs, the stage is Don Giovanni, every detail, every colour, every lighting consideration, every stage prop and backdrop are used to express the magnificent monstrosity of Don Giovanni as he is written by Mozart. The set is a complex revolving arrangement of boxes, compartments, doors and staircases that during the overture fogs over with a black mist and fills up with the name of his conquests. Donna Anna wears a black stained dress, as if carrying the corruption of Giovanni, and the whole background floods with blood as the Commendatore is killed.

It's an effective way to open the opera and it does place us directly in the mind of Don Giovanni. Elsewhere lighting, colour and projections similarly reflect mood and character, from the ice blue calculating coolness of his re-encounter with Donna Elvira, to the warmth of the golden wood panelling - and all the sincerity of wood-panelling - as he attempts to charm and seduce Zerlina. Although there's complicity on the part of Donna Anna here, there's little doubt which side of the fence this Don Giovanni lies on. There's no sympathy for the devil here - he's an opportunist, an egotist, a snake with no care or feeling for anyone but himself, who will even betray his only faithful companion (Leporello's devotion being truly dogged) just to add another name to his list. The Commendatore is killed without a qualm and without a second thought, he seduces Zerlina in front of Masetto and, in this version, he even has Don Ottavio suffer the indignity of Donna Anna submitting to him again, even after all he has done, while he sings 'Dalla sua pace'. That hits home painfully.

The attention to the staging is strong then, as it often is with Kasper Holten and in the capable hands of Es Devlin, but as with other Holten productions I've seen (Die Tote Stadt, Eugene Onegin), while the spectacle is fully expressive of the music, Holten is not so strong directing singers as actors. All of them are a little bit stiff here and tend to feel like they are going through the motions. Fatally however, the lack of drive must primarily be considered to be down to Nicola Luisotti's leaden and uninspired conducting of the orchestra. Everything plods along, or not so much plods as smoothly sails along with no sense of the dynamic or the darkness that underlies Mozart's score. It's as if the conductor wants to downplay the cruder underscoring of Mozart's dramatic flair, and that's a bad decision. The fortepiano recitative doesn't enliven matters at all either, but some of the sense of drama is restored by the conclusion, even if the actual staging lets it down here.

The projections, it has to be said, do a terrific job of conjuring up all kinds of phantom imagery and an abstract sense of Don Giovanni being consumed by his own ego. The Commendatore, as such, appears to be nothing more than a projection of Don Giovanni's descent into madness. The libretto doesn't really support this idea and it makes the staging of it a little awkward. Donna Elvira screams not at the appearance of the stone man, but at a glimpse she catches into Don Giovanni's madness. Leporello sees the statue of the Commendatore and reads the inscription on it, but turns away at the final scene as if he's not part of it. The stage does indeed become deserted by the time of the epilogue, showing a Don Giovanni trapped in a madness of his own creation. Or even perhaps one laid for him by the enemies who deliver their final verdict ('Questo è il fin') off-stage. The problem is that there's not much sense in the direction of a building crisis to what finally drives Don Giovanni over the edge.

The lack of fire (no pun intended on how the finale is delivered) in the performances is also there unfortunately in the singing. There's a good cast here and they are all very capable in the roles, but with perhaps one exception, there's not much that really stands out and impresses. Mariusz Kwiecień has the looks and the voice for Don Giovanni, and the experience (this performance is his 100th in the role he tells us in the BD extra features), but he doesn't have the necessary charm or charisma to fully inhabit or bring something personal to the role. I've seen Alex Esposito play Leporello a few times now, and like his Papageno, these Mozart roles suit his style, voice and personality well - more so I think that his otherwise fine work as a Rossini bass. He has a way of getting to the underlying humanity of the characters beneath their comic exteriors. His key aria, 'Madamina, il catalogo è questo' is good, but it's not particularly well directed and as a consequence lacks impact.

The same can be said of Malin Byström's Donna Anna. She has character and a good voice, but she's not supported elsewhere.  Her aria 'Or sai chi l'onore' for example is well sung, but with Luisotti holding the orchestra back from emphasising those emotional high points, it just doesn't hit home the way it should. Véronique Gens is the one notable exception to the casting here. She has a great voice for baroque opera and opera seria and has everything that is required for a substantial role like Donna Elvira. She stands out so far above everyone else here however and is in such a different league that she's almost miscast for this production. I also liked Elizabeth Watts' Zerlina - she's a fine singer and there's plenty of character in her voice and her performance. Antonio Poli's Don Ottavio was a little stiff and characterless, but Alexander Tsymbalyuk's Commendatore was powerfully declaimed.

On Blu-ray, the High Definition presentation of the performance is superb. Although the stage is mostly in darkness to allow the projections to be effective, the image is clear and detailed. The stereo and surround mixes bring out the colour of the music and singing. The Introduction in the extra features gives a good overview of the production, and there's a little more consideration of the nature of Don Giovanni's women and how Mozart writes for them in another featurette. Kasper Holten and Es Devlin also provide a full-length commentary for the opera. The enclosed booklet has a good essay by William Richmond on the changing faces of Don Juan in literature and film over the ages. The Blu-ray is region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.

Strauss - Salome (Bologna 2010 - Blu-ray)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 2010

Nicola Luisotti, Gabriele Lavia, Erika Sunnegårdh, Mark S. Doss, Robert Brubaker, Dalia Schaechter, Mark Milhofer, Nora Sourouzian, Gabriele Mangione, Paolo Cauteruccio, Dario Di Vietri

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

It may be a little unfair on the composer of Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, but Richard Strauss's critical reputation and musical influence on the modern opera probably rests more on his earlier stark, expressionist one-act tone-poem operas Salome and Elektra. In the year when the composer's 150th anniversary is being celebrated, there's no doubt that those other works will receive renewed critical attention and re-evaluation, but for sheer visceral impact, none of them can match these two early masterpieces.

Although Strauss would abandon his harsh experiments with the form after these two extraordinary works, there's no denying the profound influence these boundary-pushing works would have on atonality and serialism in music and the direction of opera in the 20th century. I don't think Strauss entirely abandoned the use of dissonance either when it could be used for effect in his neo-Romantic works, and by the same token, it's also possible to recognise the sweep of high Romanticism in the crushing crescendos of those highly charged mental landscapes of Elektra and Salome.

Salome in particular, as the composer's first foray into this new and unexplored territory, still has that impact of shock and awe in the sheer force of its musical expression. Undoubtedly, the method developed by Richard Strauss was a direct response to Oscar Wilde's deliciously decadent play that was the source for Hedwig Lachmann's libretto for the opera. Strauss aligns the music to the text with unerring precision for its mood, drama and psychological content, creating a work of extraordinary contrasts in its extreme love/hate relationships.

On the one side you have the lush orchestration for the flowery language and rapturous declarations of Salome's appeals to Jochanaan, and on the other you have the harsh dissonance that clashes with the vicious barbs she throws at him when those advances are rejected. Similarly, there is the lush exotic Eastern-influenced orchestration of Salome's dance that nonetheless carries a faintly disturbing undertone for how it is being enjoyed by her step-father, Herod. Even John the Baptist's auguries and admonitions have a fanatical flavour behind them that is reflected brilliantly in Strauss' music and contrasted strongly with the bickering of the Jews and the behaviour of Herod and Herodias.

In that respect, Salome is much more a product of the time of its creation than it is a biblical story, with there being a strong influence of late 19th to turn-of-the-20th-century Viennese philosophical and psychoanalytical thought, and even a measure of fin-de-siècle decadence. And it's perhaps with that in mind that Gabriele Lavia updates the period of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna production to Strauss' time, with soldiers wearing period military uniforms with helmets and lances, and Salome looking like she stepped out of the ballroom from a production of Arabella.

Salome doesn't appear to gain anything though this updating, but it looks good and matches the dark mood of the piece well. The stage for the most part remains stark and bare, the floor of Herod's palace a jagged stepping of shattered red marble. Jochanaan is hauled up out of a crack in the floor enchained and in a cage. It's simple and effective, the darkness of the night time scenes gradually brightening as events unfold. Other than the addition of a sofa for Herod, the only other real prop is a large magnifying glass that amplifies the emotional and erotic tension that develops. The bringing of the head of Jochanaan is handled differently, with a large stone monumental head arising out of the stage, but alongside the hanging decapitated body (and Strauss's score) it is still a suitably and floridly gruesome conclusion.

Musically, it's initially hard to distinguish the detail in the somewhat echoing sound mixes, but Nichola Luisotti seems bring out that important balance between the lush orchestration and the cutting edge of the rising dissonance. It's played and sung with wonderfully compelling fluidity, gripping you and holding you right through to the conclusion that should always leave you semi-stunned and breathless. That's certainly achieved here.

The singing is clear, powerful and resonant across the board here. Everyone sings with perfect clarity, strong declamation, but with fine control of expression and diction. Evidently, much relies on the cast in the roles of Salome and Jochanaan, and those are very well covered here. Erika Sunnegårdh has strong presence as Salome, handling the singing challenges of the role and fitting well within the nature of the production. Mark S. Doss is a suitably grave, deeply-intoned Jochanaan, but with superb clarity and force of expression. The fact that we also have a strong Herod in Robert Brubaker and an impressive Heriodias as well with Dalia Schaechter is a bonus.

The Blu-ray from Arthaus looks terrific on a BD25, region-free disc. The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 surround track tends to give more space to the ambience with the result that it sounds a bit indistinct and echoing in places. The LPCM 2.0 track is 'bright' but more focussed and sounds better through headphones. There are no extra features other than trailers for other releases. Subtitles are in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Korean.

Verdi - I Masnadieri

Giuseppe Verdi - I Masnadieri

Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 2012

Nicola Luisotti, Gabriele Lavia, Giacomo Prestia, Aquiles Machado, Artur Rucinski, Lucrecia Garcia, Walter Omaggio, Davio Russo, Massimiliano Chiarolla

C-Major, Tutto Verdi - Blu-ray

Based on a work by Friedrich Schiller and composed just after his first attempt at adapting Shakespeare to the opera stage in Macbeth, I Masnadieri was another attempt by Verdi to put some literary weight behind his work.  The work failed however to live up to its source and was not a success when it was first performed in London in 1847 with Verdi himself conducting.  More conventionally structured than Macbeth, I Masnadieri is not the greatest Verdi by a long stretch and hasn't enjoyed the same popularity as its predecessor, but it's still Verdi all the same, and - as has been proven by some of the other obscure early works revived for this Tutto Verdi collection - with the right kind of production, even those lesser works can be highly charged and thoroughly entertaining.  That's certainly the case with this 2012 production of from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

It's true however that the work is initially constrained by its conventional structure.  Each of the principal characters are introduced in the First Act with cavatinas that express their nature and their ambitions - ambitions that are however to a large degree incompatible with one another.  Carlo, the wayward son of Count Moor, expresses his desire to be welcomed back into the family and win back the love of his fiancee Amalia.  Those hopes of reconciliation are however shattered by a letter from his father, so he throws his lot in with a gang of bandits and becomes their leader.  The unfortunate letter has however been engineered by his younger brother Francesco.  It's in his interest to have Carlo out of the picture - permanently if possible - even if it's only to make the old man believe he is dead.

Amalia then steps up to express her position and love for Carlo and is followed by Massimiliano, the Count, who bemoans the errant nature of his eldest son.  The stagy conventionality of this introduction is matched by the apportioning of the roles according to type - the hero inevitably is a tenor, the love interest is a soprano, the villain is a baritone and the father is a bass.  No surprises there.  Having introduced the characters however, Verdi launches into the highly charged drama of the situation with his usual fiery treatment.  Francesco's plan to have Carlo reported as dead is launched and it has a devastating effect.  It might seem a bit over-the-top to have Amalia contemplate Carlo's sword with a message written in blood by Carlo even as he was dying, telling her to marry Francesco instead, but the plot has the desired impact, and more, as his father Massimiliano collapses and is believed dead.

The secret to making such material work of course - as is the case with all Verdi's early melodramas - is in the commitment and delivery of the performances.  A production of I Masnadieri stands or falls based on the performers, more so than the staging, but thankfully, the Naples production is strong in both areas.  The orchestra playing needs to be both sensitive and dramatic, and you only need to listen to the solo cello playing in the overture to see Verdi's intentions as well as gain some measure of how well that is achieved here.  The singing performances if not quite perfect are impressive in the context of the live performance, which is where this comes to life, and are in accord with these intentions.  Much rests on the situation of Carlo and Amalia in this respect and both roles are well catered for by Aquiles Machado and Lucrecia Garcia, but there are no real weaknesses here either in Giacomo Prestia's Massimiliano and Artur Rucinski's Francesco.

The staging is also supportive of the tone adopted for the work.  Some might not like the idea of the non-period specific setting, but none of it changes the essential character of the work.  Carlo and his bandits may be dressed like "dandy highwaymen" in long black leather coats and scarves, more likely to be riding bikes than horses in set designer Alessandro Camera's wasteland setting with the motto 'Libertà o Morte' (Freedom or Death) emblazoned with a skull as graffiti on the backing wall suits the tone well.  Francesco's entourage too look like party goths, and threats are made with drawn pistols rather than swords, but everything fits perfectly with the mood and the dark intent of the piece and its insistence on drama above all else.  Performance comes together well then with the score and the setting to make this an excellent account of I Masnadieri.

This 2012 production of I Masnadieri from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples is released on DVD and Blu-ray by C-Major as part of their Tutto Verdi collection. On Blu-ray the production comes across well, although there appears to be some minor image flicker in places.  Audio tracks are PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1.  The extra features contain the usual 10 minute Introduction, which places the work in the context of Verdi's career and gives an illustrated synopsis of the plot and characters.  The disc is region-free, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Puccini - La Fanciulla del West

Giacomo Puccini - La Fanciulla del West

The Metropolitan Opera, New York

Nicola Luisotti, Giancarlo del Monaco, Deborah Voigt, Marcello Giordani, Lucio Gallo

The Met: Live in HD - January 8, 2011

The staging of La Fanciulla del West in the current season of the Metropolitan Opera and its broadcast around the world as part of their The Met Live in HD programme, was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s American opera. Based on a play by famed American theatre impresario David Belasco, “The Golden Girl of the West”, the first ever performance of the opera at the Met was directed by Belasco himself, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Emmy Destinn as Minnie and the great Caruso as Dick Johnson, with Puccini himself in attendance. The elaborately period detailed Giancarlo del Monaco production from 1991 was revived for the occasion of the anniversary of one of Puccini more intriguing operas, if perhaps not one of his best.

Dating from 1910, it’s not inaccurate then to consider La Fanciulla de West as the first "Spaghetti Western" (although such racial stereotyping was played down here, as were some of the rather crude racial references to Native Americans and the Chinese in the actual opera, at least in the subtitled translation). The opera, based on Belasco’s play, certainly establishes a few of the traditional characters and set-pieces that would become familiar in Hollywood Westerns down through the ages, and these are certainly retained with the traditional, and perhaps even knowing, nature of the Met’s production. The saloon, complete with moose-head for target practice, is established as the perfect place to introduce the characters in Act 1. Set in a Californian mining camp around 1850, the men are prospectors, forty-niners, some of them gamblers playing poker, some of them cheating – leading to the inevitable bar-room brawls and shoot-outs – while others long for the folks back home and take comfort in bible lessons. All of them however are in love with the only woman in the place, Minnie, who works at the Polka bar.

Unfortunately, Puccini can’t bring anything deeper than this out of the elements and the storyline is consequently little more than a basic love story that plays out between two pretenders for the barmaid’s hand, the sheriff Jack Rance, and newcomer Dick Johnson, who is reality is an outlaw known as Ramerrez. Puccini is of course the master of the love story, particularly the tragic love story where life throws almost insurmountable difficulties at an unexpected love that has just freshly blossomed, but while there is some clever use of metaphor for those sentiments in the mining occupation of the prospectors – the only treasure all of them want above all the gold in the mountains is Minnie’s love – the storyline elsewhere is fairly run of the mill, the drama being around whether it will be an outlaw who steals that particular "treasure" from the virginal Minnie.

Puccini however attempts rather more sophistication in the music itself, modernising his writing, mindful of the impact of Wagner while at the same time keeping those familiar melodic traits and crescendos that hit the expected emotional high notes. If it’s not quite to the same depth or complexity in the characterisation of his romantic hero and heroine this time, and there are no memorable arias comparable with Tosca, La Bohème or Madama Butterfly, the singing does however manage to express a longing and an emotional life to the characters that would otherwise be invisible behind the tough, weathered exteriors of the hard-life and deprivations they have suffered being so far away from home, living in the hope of something better.

As Deborah Voigt acknowledged in the interview during the interval of The Met Live in HD broadcast, Minnie is consequently a rather more challenging singing and dramatic role, and not suited to the typical heroine of a Puccini opera. Voigt fits the bill well as Minnie, noted for her Strauss and Wagner roles, but having some of the gentler lyrical qualities of a Puccinian lyrical soprano. While the demands of the role and the performance took their toll on some of the high notes of the Act 1, Voigt hits the emotional force of all the key moments in Act 2 – where the opera really comes together – bringing out the full depth of Minnie’s personality while retaining the vulnerability of her position. Lucio Gallo reprises the role of sheriff Jack Vance that he performed for the rather camp Nikolaus Lehnhoff production at the Nederlandse Opera last year, giving it a little more spice as the baritone baddie, all but twirling his moustache. Marcello Giordani sang the role of Dick Johnson well enough, but never made much of an impression otherwise.

I’ve never been totally sold on La Fanciulla del West as an opera – mainly on account of the rather simple and crude storyline – but it does represent an interesting stage in Puccini’s career and it does indeed have many fascinating musical aspects and melody lines that draw much more out of the work than is evident from the surface impressions given by the characters. La Fanciulla del West is perhaps a Puccini for those who don’t normally like Puccini, but without the usual sureties of a typical Puccini opera, it’s also consequently more difficult to make it work effectively. I haven’t seen a production I’ve been entirely happy with – though I’m sure it can be done – but, particularly in its impressive second Act, the Met’s 100th anniversary staging was a fine effort nonetheless.