Schreker - Irrelohe (Lyon, 2022)

Franz Schreker - Irrelohe

Opéra de Lyon - 2022

Bernhard Kontarsky, David Bösch, Tobias Hächler, Piotr Micinski, Ambur Braid, Lioba Braun, Julian Orlishausen, Michaël Gniffke, Peter Kirk, Romanas Kudriašovas, Barnaby Rea, Kwang Soun Kim, Paul-Henry Vila, Antoine Saint-Espès, Didier Roussel

Opéra de Lyon - 25th March 2022

It's tempting to consider Franz Schrecker as a product of his time, a brief period of post-Wagnerian bliss between the wars in the first half of the 20th century when music was still able to wallow in extravagant orchestration and decadent subject matter with dubious psychological underpinnings. For some it would be easy to dismiss that as having no place in the modern world of music, still less in the harsh times of the present day. All the more so since those ideas come to fruition and fullest expression in Schreker's 1924 opera Irrelohe, a work that has come to be seen as the natural conclusion of this style of music, which subsequently fell rapidly out of fashion, burning like the castle of Irrelohe in the opera itself in some kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.

In reality, the subject of the opera is timeless. Maybe not much in that it has universal application and relevance, although I'm sure some imaginative director could put such a complexion on it. Rather its universal qualities lie within its wildly Romantic storytelling on the level of... well, maybe not the grand mythology of Wagner or the turn of the century reflection on man's relationship with mythology in the works of Richard Strauss, but perhaps with less ambitiously and with less grandiosity drawing from the classic genre of horror filled folk tales.

No, a mere glance at the synopsis of the plot of Irrelohe reveals that it is not filled with meaning and subtle suggestion, as the composer himself would admit in the face of his critics, but it does deal nonetheless with dark human impulses and history. If a director wished to see it in the context of Schreker's time it could be seen as a reflection on the madness of war, of violent masculine urges that can't be suppressed, resulting in a cycle of horror that can only be redeemed though a cleansing by fire. There are certainly modern equivalences for that, but I'm not sure any of them would add anything to the work.

Schreker however was indeed working to an area of philosophical thought, drawing from the works of Otto Weininger, relating those violent urges to sexual impulses and the roles that men and women play working in dialectic opposition to one another. It was just one of many strange philosophical ideas floating around at this time. Irrelohe wears its subtext openly, borne aloft by the over-heated music, just in case you fail to catch it or be persuaded by the limitations of the libretto. That's hard to imagine however, as it's expressed as a full-blooded Gothic horror, one that nonetheless revels beautifully in the mood of the situation.

Irrelohe immediately establishes that mood of a dark foreboding with a population living in fear of the mysterious castle perched on a hill over the village of Irrelohe. Lola tells her son Peter the story of how the lords of the castle and village live under a curse that drives them to venture forth, ravage young women in the locality and die young. She herself has been a victim to Count Heinrich, and Peter is to discover that he is the fruit of that illicit union. One young woman however, Eva, braves the danger and resolves to marry the current young lord, leaving Peter infuriated. There are however others keen to bring about the downfall of the rotten dynasty of Irrelohe by burning it to the ground.

David Bösch, who previously directed another Schreker opera Die Gezeichneten for Lyon that I was fortunate to see in person in 2015, is happy to play to those qualities in the work and recognise the cinematic qualities in Schreker's score. The opening titles are emblazoned across the screen as if it were a classic black and white horror B-movie, a silent one as it later appears (not that any early silent movie would enjoy such a rich orchestral accompaniment). The movie inserts effectively extend the drama beyond the limitations of the stage sets, if not quite bring any greater depth out of the work.

Not that anything else is needed with Schreker's score sweeping you along in the ludicrous drama of Eva's strange attraction/submission to the quite clearly deranged and dangerous Count Heinrich. They are not the only ones whose behaviour is strange and borderline deranged. Lola's folk-song refrain and devotion to her rapist seems to be slowly pushing her over the edge. Christobald, who once loved Lola, has enlisted a group of minstrels to burn the place to the ground. Peter, with the blood of the Count of Irrelohe in his veins is tortured with deep Freudian complexes that also appear ready to be unleashed in sexual violence.

Falko Herold - who also worked on the sets for this year's Festival Rigoletto for Lyon - again manages to find suitable locations for this drama to play out. Act I has a small tavern for Lola and Peter with the castle ever-present, looming over the village of Irrelohe. Act II, opening with an obligatory lost in the dark woods film sequence, reveals a stage of war-torn burnt-out remains of trees before taking us into the decaying Suddenly Last Summer-like glasshouse that juts from the side of the castle overlooking the village. Act III brings a conflagration to the miniature of the castle that extends its cleansing out over the land.

Rather than the cleansing fire allowing Eva and Heinrich the opportunity to look ahead to a better new world in Schreker's unlikely optimistic conclusion, Bösch sees no redemption, allowing Eva to also perish at her own hand. The ending needs some big statement, but I'm not sure this one works either, but it's hard to make anything about this drama work convincingly. The music is much less of an issue and the veteran conductor Bernhard Kontarsky allowed the whole wondrous beauty of Schreker's musical vision to weave its own magic of fluctuating moods and sinuous lines. No excuses need be made for that and it was truly a long-awaited joy to experience this particular Franz Schreker opera performed on stage. It didn't disappoint.

If anyone could bring a level of conviction to the characters beyond those dubious psychological archetypes, it was Canadian soprano Ambur Braid as Eva. There are limits to what you can do make any of these characters relatable, but in terms of singing this was a standout performance that impressed with the sheer force of her commitment that reflected her character's single-minded determination to see through her belief in bringing about change. I enjoyed Julian Orlishausen's Peter similarly for throwing himself into a character who because of the difficult circumstances of his origin has little redeeming qualities, or perhaps just less hope of redemption. 

Tobias Hächler's gently lyrical Count Heinrich showed, by way of contrast, another slightly effete side to "the masculine curse" or whatever you want to call it. It's in Heinrich that you are tempted to seek that deeper, perhaps subconscious or unwittingly premonitory self-destructive impulse that would see Schreker and many other composers working within this musical idiom or school labelled as degenerate 'Entartete' composers and banned by the Nazis. The subsequent conflagration initiated by the Third Reich would almost erase their music from history in its wake, but with productions like this, the revelatory Opera Vlaanderen production of Der Schmied Von Gent and surely more revivals of Die Gezeichneten and Der Schatzgräber to come, we can't discount the possibility that these works might still have deeper truths to reveal to us yet.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Verdi - Rigoletto (Lyon, 2022)

Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto

Opéra de Lyon - 2022

Alexander Joel, Axel Ranisch, Enea Scala, Dalibor Jenis, Nina Minasyan, Stefan Cerny, Agata Schmidt, Daniele Terenzi, Grégoire Mour, Dumitru Madarasan, Roman Chabaranok, Heiko Pinkowksi

Opéra de Lyon - 23rd March 2022

Some people might not like it being played around with and transposed to a more modern period, but the fact is that even Verdi needed to revise Victor Hugo's original setting of Le Roi s'amuse and backdate Rigoletto in order to make it work for his own purposes as an opera. State censorship of course played a part in making things difficult for him, but Verdi was never one for letting that stop him and he certainly made no compromises on what mattered about the subject of Rigoletto; the abuse of power, the dangers of aligning oneself with them, and the strain this places on personal and family life. Those themes are evidently timeless.

Presented as part of their 2022 Festival season alongside the Franz Schreker rarity Irrelohe and the Bach cantatas arranged as Trauernacht, the Lyon production of Rigoletto uses an idea that is familiar to other interpretations, taking it away from the elevated context of kings or dukes behaving badly and putting it in a more relatable modern day context where the power and abuse of it is in the hands of men with money. Here, as with other mafia versions of the opera (see Jonathan Miller's famous production or indeed the Met's Las Vegas version) the Duke is a gangster, but one who presides over the tower block HLMs of Paris or even perhaps the the built-up high rises on the outskirts of suburban Lyon.

There is another level added here in Axel Ranisch's production that attempts to bring it even more into present-day reality; an on-screen movie that shows how anyone - anyone - can relate to the sentiments so powerfully expressed by Verdi in Rigoletto. The movie sequences feature "Hugo", a Verdi fan whose favourite opera is Rigoletto, and, as the overture plays, the projected scenes show him loading up a video cassette performance of an opera. He can identify personally with the plight, the fears and the loss that Rigoletto experiences in his devotion to his family, as he has had difficult experiences with his own, to the extent that he is now about to take his own life.

Most of the new approach to the opera in this production indeed takes place on the screen. Hugo was I believe also meant to be a live presence on the stage as a silent actor - inserting himself into the opera drama - but on the evening I attended Heiko Pinkowksi was indisposed and the two stage and screen stories played out in parallel rather than blended together. It still worked well, particularly effective in a couple of key scenes. The scene where Gilda asks about her mother (Act I, Scene 9 - "Fatte ch'io sappia la madre mia"), a projection shows Hugo's loss of his own wife when pregnant with their daughter. It certainly hits home the reality of what Rigoletto experiences and gives reason for his over-protectiveness of Gilda. It makes it real and it does it perfectly in the context of Verdi's score.

Elsewhere the actual stage production is less creative in its depiction of the excesses of the Duke's behaviour and in the nature of the gang members who follow, aiding and abetting in his crimes. It's a typical depiction of a street mob, a gangland mafia with an arrogant, charismatic boss. Falko Herold's set design however is superb in how effectively it captures the sense of desperation of life in the high rise banlieus. That too feeds into Gilda's hope of escape from the poverty and restrictive circumstances of her situation.

There are actually one or two individual directorial touches that also play neatly into Verdi's feel for the story. Monterone is actually killed in the first Act, and it's his ghost that appears to be being led out to execution in Act II, the bloody apparition emphasising the deep impact that the curse (la maledizione!) has had on Rigoletto's mind. Similarly, Gilda's death scene pushes the idea of self-sacrifice, as Sparfucile holds back when he removes the cloak from the unexpected late-night visitor and recognises Gilda. Or since he hasn't seen her before, he probably hesitates to kill a woman, leaving Gilda to present him with the necessary dead body by killing herself. It's effective but perhaps more so since the underlying sentiments are also mirrored in Hugo's filmed story.

It has to be said that this movie drama no more strives for realism than Verdi's melodrama, but somewhere between the on-stage action and the events played out on the screen, Ranisch's production touches on the essential qualities, the humanity and the emotional force that Verdi brings through in the fantastic score. That is played out in a exemplary fashion by Alexander Joel, standing in on this evening for an indisposed Daniele Rustioni. It's best brought out in performance however by Nina Minasyan's superb Gilda. Holding back a little only in dramatic performance, vocally at least she was outstanding, exhibiting a wonderful purity of voice and a smooth legato that reached up to those high bel canto coloratura notes with precision and often with the requisite emotion.

Enea Scala was also in very fine voice as Il Duca and provided the necessary charisma as well as bringing a bit of additional character to the Duke. The production assisted in this by introducing a Duchess who silently reprimands his actions and indiscretions, but tacitly puts up with them. Scala's delivery of the Duke's arias was excellent, filled with the swagger of one who knows he can get away with it. Dalibor Jenis was a fine Rigoletto, but aside from Leo Nucci, I have seen few who can really bring something special to this role. Stefan Cerny's Sparfucile was also well played. It may be hard to bring anything new to Rigoletto, but there is still life, truth and relevance in the work, and the Lyon production certainly got that across.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Hindemith - Sancta Susanna (Lyon, 2012)

Paul Hindemith - Sancta Susanna (Lyon)

Opéra de Lyon, 2012

Bernhard Kontarsky, John Fulljames, Agnes Selma Weiland, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Joanna Curelaru Kata, Zoé Micha, Hervé Dez Martinez

Opera Platform

Less than half an hour long, it seems that Paul Hindemith's early one-act opera Sancta Susanna is designed to pack as much shock impact into its short running time as possible, and it's true that Hindemith intended to shake up the musical establishment in the early 1920s. It certainly had the desired effect when it was refused at Stuttgart for its blasphemous content, receiving its premiere in 1922 in Frankfurt. As short as it is and as long ago now as it was composed, the work still has the potential to court controversy when it is performed.

It was chosen by the Opéra de Lyon in 2012 as one of the companion pieces for their Puccini + season, offering a contrasting or complementary work to be played alongside each of the three one-act dramas of Puccini's Il Trittico. Sancta Susanna was evidently chosen to be performed with Suor Angelica, another story of a nun who faces a great internal conflict between her spiritual duties and her own human needs and female desires. Although they are very nearly contemporary, there is very little that is common in the treatment of these themes or in terms of musical approach, but it's a contrast that works well and in favour of both works.

Based on a German expressionist short story by August Albert Berhard Stramm, Sancta Susanna is however rather more abstract in its approach to the drama. Hindemith's equally expressionist score is suggestive of mood and of powerful barely repressed forces on the verge of spilling over into shocking revelations. The setting of Hindemith's work consequently takes place in an enclosed space of closed-up people, in a convent with nuns in protective clothing that separates them from the people of world outside. What is kept inside however is bursting to escape and it doesn't take much for those passions to overflow.

For Sister Susanna, praying before the status of Christ, the conflict reaches unbearable proportions when on a Spring evening the sound of lovers outside reaches her ears, Hindemith's music pushing the pitch of an organ note to almost unbearable intensity. Susanna's self-possession disappears when she is told by Sister Klementia of another nun forty years ago who abandoned herself to her passions, stripping naked and wrapping herself around a statue of Christ. Walled up in a cell for her actions, Susanna is convinced she can hear sounds the nun's tomb.

The call of the flesh and its conflict with the spirit lead Susanna to also strip off her garments, an action that infects Klementia also, the situation building into a musical frenzy before the other nuns attempt to intervene and attempt to call a halt to this satanic display. Their anger is directed towards Klementia, but Susanna offers herself up to their displeasure. More than just abandoning herself to illicit desires, Susanna blasphemously proposes a union of the soul and the flesh.

Director John Fulljames makes the most of the opportunity or indeed the necessity for this scene to be as outrageous and shocking as possible in the 2012 Lyon production, the soprano Agnes Selma Weiland left completely naked but for satanic writing tattooed across her body. The darkness of the convent and Susanna are illuminated in blinding light as the naked woman offers herself to the descending figure of Christ on the cross. It's highly effective and still startling to see it staged in this way.

From a singing and musical perspective it's also highly effective. Bernhard Kontarsky conducts here, as with the Puccini + production of Schoenberg's Von Heute auf Morgen, to bring out all the power of the work alongside its more suggestive tones and moods. Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Anna Hofmann also shows the range of her abilities here, which even in such a short piece is just if not even more demanding than either of her other Lyon appearances in Von Heuten auf Morgen and Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten. Agnes Selma Weiland surpasses the greatest challenges of the work, physically and musically stripping soul and body bare in a way that a work like this demands if it is to have any impact or meaning at all.

Links: Opéra de Lyon, Opera Platform

Schoenberg - Von Heute auf Morgen (Lyon, 2012)

Arnold Schoenberg - Von Heute auf Morgen

Opéra de Lyon, 2012

Bernhard Kontarsky, John Fulljames, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Ivi Karnezi, Rui Dos Santos, Wolfgang Newerla, Marin Bisson, Pierre Lucat

Opera Platform

Schoenberg's one act opera Von Heute auf Morgen might have been chosen by Opera Lyon as one of the works to accompany each of the three parts of Puccini's Il Trittico in their Puccini + production of 2012 but it's by no means a 'filler' work. It was partnered with Il Tabarro (Hindemith's Sancta Susanna was performed alongside Suor Angelica and Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy alongside Gianni Schicchi) presumably for its depiction of marriage problems and questions of infidelity, but there are hints - suggested in this production directed by John Fulljames - that Von Heute auf Morgen is more than a middle-class relationship drama.

It does however initially appear very much like one of Richard Strauss's marital dramas such as Intermezzo. A husband and wife return after an evening dinner party, musing on the events and the people they have met. The husband is open in his admiration for a seductive lady he met there, an old friend of his wife's who appears to be much more modern in her ways. The wife agrees that she has transformed into something beautiful, unrecognisable from the person she was before. The wife has likewise taken a fancy to the Singer, finding something in his voice that speaks to her, makes her feel alive, fresh in a way that she doesn't feel any longer with her husband.

Having a young child, who is woken up by their loud discussions and disagreements, both the husband and the wife are clearly looking for something that has gone missing from their marriage. The husband is attracted to a free spirit who seems to be a woman of the world, while he claims his wife has become a Hausfrau. The wife has lost the edge of excitement that lies in flirtation, becoming mired in habit, feeling detached and alone by her husband's seeming indifference to her now. The short opera develops then into a fantasy imagination of the other people they could have been or could be with other people.

So yes, on the surface certainly Von Heute auf Morgen appears to be a fairly straightforward and commonplace domestic dispute that has been played out countless times. On the other hand, one of the most significant points about the work is the time it was written and the fact that it is written entirely in the 12-tone method developed by Schoenberg. This puts a different spin on matters. In many ways, the opera is about imagining how music - mired in habit and custom - can regain its edge of freshness, newness and excitement. Von Heute auf Morgen can be seen as Schoenberg's attempt to consider how modern music could shake up old stuffy traditions.

But - as you often find with Strauss - Schoenberg's Von Heute auf Morgen acknowledges that it's by no means easy to shake off the attractions of music's past. Traces of Romanticism, of the composer's former thrall to the influence of Wagner, can be heard in the arrangements that seek to express the conflict between the old and the new. It's even explicitly stated in the Singer's use of Romantic identification with Siegfried and quotes from Das Rheingold that seduce the Wife, but how can one resist the attraction? How can one be truly modern? How can one be true to oneself?

Schoenberg seems to take comfort or inspiration from the words of the couple in the libretto as justification for his new approach. "We live with ideas. They live with past hopes". Schoenberg's couple would appear to decide to put their differences aside and settle for the comfort of the familiar when they reject the attractions of the other free and easy couple and settle for family domestic conformity, but there are different ways you can view this. John Fulljames's direction helps emphasise the point that it's not about following fashion as much as following one's own inner calling, but at the same time not he finds a welcome measure of lightness and humour in the one-act opera that serves it well.

The set designs for the production presents a number of apparently attractive alternatives to the 1920s period bourgeois idea of modernity that the couple inhabit (Von Heute auf Morgen was first performed in 1930). The period and the paintings on the wall change from hard-edge modernism to lush soft-lighted decadence, through to the Pop-Art of the 60s and the psychedelic 70s, as the couple flirt with the idea of embracing change and novelty as an alternative to conformity and habit. Eventually they reject each of these possibilities - and the lure of the attractive other couple - and instead recognise the value of what they have. Fashions change, but love remains; living it from day to day is what matters and is what it means to be truly modern.

Schoenberg's 12-tone serialism also points to another way of being modern; of music not merely being just for dramatic accompaniment or illustration, but a means rather to explore interior lives that lie outside the conventional measurements of space and time. Conducted here at Lyon by Bernhard Kontarsky, the intricacies of the arrangements are managed beautifully, giving a sense of all those possibilities that Schoenberg suggested. The production flows with impressive performances from Magdalena Anna Hofmann and Wolfgang Newerla as the Husband and Wife couple, but Ivi Karnezi and Rui Dos Santos are also fine, offering persuasive alternatives as the Friend and the Singer.

Links: Opéra de Lyon, Opera Platform

Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Lyon, 2016 - Webcast)

Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Opéra de Lyon, 2016

Kazushi Ono, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Ausrine Stundyte, Vladimir Ognovenko, Peter Hoare, John Daszak, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Almas Svilpa, Jeff Martin, Michaela Selinger, Clare Presland, Jeff Martin, Kwang Soun Kim

Culturebox - 4 February 2016

He remains a controversial and divisive figure in the opera world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov is nonetheless always an interesting director. In particular his work is often inspired when he is working in the Russian repertoire; opening up a whole new way of looking on works that are rarely performed and insufficiently explored. His production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, recently seen at the English National Opera but now transferred to Lyon and sung in its native language with Russian leads, is a typically strong reading of the work that has many of the director's familiar techniques. In fact, it would at first appear that there's not much the director has to offer a work that is surrounded in enough controversy of its own. The touches Tcherniakov introduces here however are subtle and achieve maximum impact.

For a while at least, it seems like business as usual. There are no unexpected twists that subvert the material, nothing too challenging or unexpected. It's updated evidently, but not in an extravagant way to make any obvious contemporary reference. Instead of being a wealthy flour merchant, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov here runs a more modern warehouse, with workers in hi-vis jackets operating forklift trucks, with a row of secretaries in the office and employees all wearing security passes around their necks. Even from the point of view of merely indicating the banality of business interests and the uniformity of the modern workplace, and in how it pertains to the relative positions of men and women within it, Tcherniakov has it down to a tee.

The background setting is an important matter in the opera, but still, it's not anything that you wouldn't see in any other Tcherniakov production. This one doesn't look that much different from his productions of The Tsar's Bride or Verdi's Macbeth, and if that means that it's not quite as radical as the updating of those works were, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk already has all the sex and violence it needs. What becomes apparent then is not that Tcherniakov's approach is in any way 'tamer' here, or that he has run out of original ideas, as much as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk may be the definitive Tcherniakov opera. It's as if the director has taken all the boldness, the shock and the impact of this opera and used it as a model that all other operas ought to aspire to match. Tcherniakov seems to want to bring the inner Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk out of every opera he works on.

In as far as dealing with the subjects that Shostakovich depicted in his version of Nikolai Leskov's work, there are certainly other levels that could be emphasised in the opera - and it seems amazing that the composer himself seemed to be unaware of how that might would play out to the Soviet censor - but Tcherniakov is not particularly concerned with those. The wider view of the Russian character, the implications of corruption within the system and the impact that has on a woman living within a male-dominated society are all still there as part of the wider canvas that Shostakovich paints so vividly in his score, but Tcherniakov recognises that there is also an attention in the music to the individual, and in this case that's evidently the 'Lady Macbeth' of the work, Katerina Lvovna Izmailova.

Having established the context only as far as it necessary, without any unnecessary emphasis or distortion, Tcherniakov's focus is almost wholly on Katia. The director often reduces the scene down to the small room where the wife of the boss's son is mostly confined. It's a warmly-lit room decorated with rugs covering the walls, Katia moreover dressed in a more 'traditional' way that emphasises the extent to which she is cut off and set apart from the rest of the world. She daren't venture too far out of that room, and when she does - in the only way that would be possible for a woman in her position - she's soon put back in her place. Her form of liberty eventually leads Katerina and her lover Sergei being arrested and sent to Siberia. As this just closes down her world further, Tcherniakov chooses to depict all the horror that follows within the confines of a small cell rather than on a forced march in the open outdoors.

Closing down the stage in this way, reducing it to a small block, allows Tcherniakov to work in closer detail, more like a film director than a stage director. There is even a fixed camera placed high within Katia's bedroom for the sake of the video recording of the performance in Lyon that allows the level of detail, nuance and intimacy created to be seen, but clearly the impact is felt even at the back of the theatre. Tcherniakov knows he doesn't have to make grand gestures because they are already there in the music and in the subject, and he focuses instead on the performers, on what their characters feel and endure. Even on that level, there's a huge range to cover in the vivid personalities of Katia, Boris, Sergei and Zynovny, to say nothing of the colourful secondary characters. Tcherniakov's direction of the performers is superb, making them and their actions feel utterly real, and it makes all the difference in this work.

The simmering passions and explosions of violence and aggressive sexual behaviour are all fully scored by Shostakovich and brought out in all their wonderful, lurid glory by Kazushi Ono and the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon. It really is a wonderful account that makes no attempt to play down those verismo characteristics that are what gives the work such an impact. A few of the English cast remain here - John Daszak and Peter Hoare superbly reprising the roles of Sergei and Zynovny - but the Russian production of the opera undoubtedly benefits from having singers like Ausrine Stundyte and Vladimir Ognovenko play Katarina and Boris. Stundyte is exceptionally good in an understated but compelling performance that simmers with the underlying strength of Katia's passions and her capacity to love as violently as she kills.

Links: Culturebox, Opéra de Lyon

Van der Aa - Sunken Garden (Lyon, 2015 - Lyon)

Michel van der Aa - Sunken Garden

Opéra de Lyon, 2015

Etienne Siebens, Michel van der Aa, Roderick Williams, Katherine Manley, Claron McFadden, Jonathan McGovern, Kate Miller-Heidke

TNP, Lyon - 15 March 2015

One of the benefits of seeing a modern and fairly experimental new opera like Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden as part of the wider context of Opéra de Lyon's 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' opera mini festival is that it helps put it into context, highlighting and contrasting it with other works on a similar broad theme. Here, Sunken Garden is set alongside Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, and surprisingly the comparison does tend to work in its favour.

Having only heard Sunken Garden previously on a BBC Radio 3 broadcast during its premiere performances at the English National Opera in 2013, it didn't really seem to work as a conventional opera. Even more so than other operas, this was however clearly a work where the visual component is just as important as the music. Involving a number of other different disciplines and embracing all kinds of new technology, radio obviously wasn't really the right medium to explore a 3-D film-opera. At its French premiere in the Théâtre National Populaire in the Villeurbanne suburb of Lyon, 'Le jardin englouti' clearly worked well on the stage and received a much more enthusiastic response from what looked like a sold-out performance.

Seen fully-performed, some aspects however, such as David Mitchell's compendium of stock phrases and banal cliches that represent 'the way real people speak', still grated, but these were probably not as evident to a French audience. When viewed in performance, the supernatural elements of the story, built-up through the dialogues of a small cast and with filmed interviews sections, comes across even more so as having the whole look and feel of an average episode of Doctor Who. In the context of the Mysterious Gardens festival however, and particularly having watched an ambitious staging of Orfeo ed Euridice at the Lyon Opera House just the previous night, it encouraged one to think a little more about the content and themes of the work.

If you can get past the banalities of a plot where a meglomaniac evil villain seeks a means of achieving immortality by capturing the souls of others and holding them in a 'sunken garden', essentially it's no more ridiculous an idea than a hunchback dwarf creating a paradise for decadent nobles to indulge their corrupt lusts, or for a musician to journey to Hell in the hope of bringing his beloved wife back from the dead. Regardless of the musical means and the technology used to put this across, similar themes are explored in Sunken Garden, and they do have rather more weight and meaning that could easily be missed in dazzle and colour of the spectacle, although ideally it ought to enhance them.

Sunken Garden is about secret places, the kind of secret place that one wishes they could withdraw to when faced with the horrors or even just the difficulties of everyday life when it gets too much to deal with. Like Orpheus, Toby Kramer is an artist who has suffered loss after the death of his wife, and seeks to find answers or some kind of solace in his work. A multi-media artist, Kramer is pouring his energies into a new project based on the real-life disappearance of a young man, Simon Vines, filming interviews with friends, trying to understand what could have motivated someone to choose to leave a successful life and career behind him, if it was even a choice he made himself. A wealthy donor, the owner of an art gallery, is fascinated by Kramer's work so far, and willing to keep providing him with funds to expand it into a 3-D film.

The longer Kramer works on the project, the stranger the disappearance of Simon Vine appears, the artist discovering documents and footage on a mobile phone that suggests that Vine's former girlfriend Amber Jacquemain has also disappeared. Dealing with his own loss, Kramer's personal involvement in the work deepens, much to the frustration of Zenna Briggs, the representative from the art gallery who is getting impatient with the slow progress of the project. Eventually, Kramer discovers that Simon and Amber have both been abducted, their souls being sucked dry to fuel a sunken garden in another dimension to feed the desire of a villain who wants to be immortal; a person he already knows.

As ludicrous as it might sound, Sunken Garden does in its own way - and really not so different from the ambitions of Alviano Salvago and Orpheus - seek to create a paradise that takes one away and makes one immune from the horrors and tyranny of everyday existence. Ultimately Kramer has to decide whether he wants to cut himself off from the world, initially through his never-ending art project, and then in some manufactured world of technology (seeking solace and escape in technology is a major theme here and the entire raison d'être for all the 3-D technology in the film-opera itself). The realisation that there is a downside to any ambitions to create a paradise outside of the boundaries of natural order is one that Kramer, much like his counterparts in Die Gezeichneten and Orfeo ed Euridice, has to eventually accept and come to terms with, but it's not an easy decision to make.

Visually then, the sunken garden must be an alluring but slightly sinister place, and the impressive 3-D film technology used by Michel van der Aa does that very well, justifying its use as much more than a gimmick. The composer is well-known for his efforts to expand the range of lyric drama and musical expression, and as such it's not so much a question of attempting to progress opera into new directions, as much as making best use of all the resources available now that will allow full expression of the ideas of the subject. Assessing the value of Sunken Garden as a purely musical drama is not really relevant either. It's only one small part of a much more widely-encompassing view of opera as music theatre. On its own the music might not be particularly memorable, but it is eclectic, and doesn't feel constrained to fit old models of expression, using sequencers and sound effects as well as more traditional instrumentation, freely borrowing from a wide range of modern influences (Radiohead being an acknowledged inspiration).

Whether this means that the work has any place in posterity doesn't seem to be foremost in the mind of the composer/director/filmmaker either - although its revival here for Lyon is a good sign. Van der Aa's concern seems to be solely with putting the work across in the most effective way with whatever state-of-the-art means are available now, and it's a highly effective and imaginative stage production. If it is revived in the future, a production doesn't necessarily need to use 3-D or the same pre-recorded filmed performances - two of the singers don't appear in person here - but, much like the reinventions of older works for the modern stage (to again go back to the extraordinary Lyon production of Orfeo ed Euridice), it can be freely reinterpreted using whatever new technology is available. Whatever means is used - whether that's holograms or use of other dimensions (hey, who knows?) - the message about the misuse of technology and its incompatibility with human nature will surely still be relevant.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice (Lyon, 2015 - Lyon)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice

Opéra de Lyon, 2015

Enrico Onofri, David Marton, Victor von Halem, Christopher Ainslie, Elena Galitskaya

Lyon - 14 March 2015
 
For a work that was intended to be stripped-back of ornamentation according to Gluck's reformist agenda for opera seria, Orfeo ed Euridice is surprisingly amenable to elaboration and interpretation. Whether it has the full resources of La Fura dels Baus behind it, or Castellucci's reaching out beyond the myth to the reality, what matters most is that a production gives focus and emphasis to the all-important dramatic and emotional core of the work. I'm not sure that it matters then the new Lyon production takes a few liberties with a staging that fully supports Gluck's dramatic intentions, but it's in very unconventional territory in its musical choices and interpretation.

Like Castellucci's Orfeo, the key point to be addressed is the ending, which must be reconsidered if one is to convey the truth of the drama and the myth. The happy ending imposed on Gluck's opera isn't convincing and it actually goes against the intentions of the myth by showing that death isn't the end and that there is a possibility of second chances. What there should be is the possibility of reward and redemption for Orpheus or at least some sense of coming to terms with the bereavement of his beloved Eurydice, but it is only in his art, in his music, that he finds the ability to endure and come out stronger from the experience.

David Marton's production for Lyon, part of their 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' opera festival, attempts to address this issue without invalidating the orginal myth or how it plays out in Gluck's opera. As its starting point, it takes inspiration from Virgil and depicts Orpheus as an aged writer who has never recovered from the death of his wife. The house he was building for them remains unfinished, and sitting at his desk tapping at a typewriter, he pours his loss out into his writing (the text projected on-screen behind him derived from a work by Samuel Beckett), as he is haunted by visions of their wedding, her death and the impossibility of ever being able to recapture what has slipped from his grasp. In his tortured prose, the old man attempts to rewrite his idea of a perfect life as it might have been, but it is doomed to fail.

The production takes the very unusual step then of splitting the role of Orpheus into two - an old Orpheus, a writer, and the younger version of his memory who is seen in flashback. As such, the traditional story is played out in a way that bears little relation to the original. Orpheus's journey to the Underworld is one that is undertaken more in writing than in 'reality', the old writer trying to reclaim what he once almost had, still seeing himself as a young man. The idea of not looking back at Eurydice isn't adhered to then, but it's more a case that Eurydice, ever-youthful in death, recoils when she sees past the young image of Orpheus to the reality of him now as an old man. It's only when the old Orpheus himself dies at the end of this production that he is reunited in the afterlife, young again, with Eurydice, the couple sharing a domestic moment with Love (Amor), depicted here as five children.

It's all a bit confusing at first, but in theory the director's concept is sound, and the production does touch on the beautiful poignancy of the work - even more so with its twist on the ending - without betraying the intent of the original. Musically however, this is not how you might be accustomed to hearing Orfeo ed Euridice. Not only do we have two Orpheuses, but one is a bass and the other a countertenor. Scored for a countertenor or mezzo-soprano, I would never have imagined the role being sung by a bass, and I don't quite know musically how they managed to split the role between the extreme range of male voices, but somehow they do it, and it is surprisingly successful. As hinted above in the description of the drama, the role of Amor is also reworked as a small chorus of five boys. This is all very unusual and it can be initially very confusing.

These aren't the only musical liberties taken with the work for the sake of this twist in the dramatic presentation. The music is also slightly 'adapted', and it takes a little while to get used to the unfamiliar interpretation. In one scene, for example, a radio broadcast listened to by the old Orpheus plays a musical response in interplay with the orchestra in the pit. Is this just being clever, or is there a valid reason for it? It may be that memories are stirred by the music on the radio, sparking off a sequence that lies somewhere between memory and imagination - the Elysian fields scene and Dance of the Blessed Spirits, for example, taking the form of a wedding reception. There are likewise a few pauses in order to let some dramatic scene play out or for Orpheus to hammer some more on his typewriter, which is not entirely satisfactory either, breaking up the flow and rhythm of the piece.

On the other hand, Enrico Onofri's interpretation and the actual playing of the orchestra is just beautiful, the opera played with all the dances included, the work allowed to breathe freely in those heavenly melodies, some of the greatest music ever written. There's no rigid Baroque playing here, the music is allowed to be dramatically expressive, putting the solo clarinet player on-stage for relevant Orphic musical expression, and the chorus are just extraordinarily good, lifting those moments of intense dramatic feeling. Consideration in the conducting was given towards the lighter voices of Christopher Ainsley's countertenor and Elena Galitskaya's Eurydice, allowing the beauty of the voices to carry. Victor von Halem's resonant, lyrical Wagnerian bass needed no assistance, and it was simply amazing to hear Orpheus sung in this register.

As slightly troubling as it might have been to hear such sacrosanct material played around with in this way, and as confusing as it might have been dramatically, this was a brave gamble by Enrico Onofri, David Marton and the Opéra de Lyon. I'm not sure that the Lyon audience knew entirely what to make of it all. Victor von Halem rightly received the loudest applause for a touching and beautifully sung performance, even if it wasn't entirely what Gluck had in mind. The contribution of the production team on the other hand wasn't entirely appreciated by a small section of the audience, however it should have been clear that if the worked touched as deeply as it did, establishing the right tone as a contemplative Orfeo ed Euridice, a sad one but never sentimental, it's because of and not despite those unconventional production choices in the music and the staging.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten (Lyon, 2015 - Lyon)

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Opéra de Lyon, 2015

Alejo Perez, David Bösch, Charles Workman, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Simon Neal, Markus Marquardt, Michael Eder, Aline Kostrewa, Jan Petryka, Jeff Martin, Robert Wörle, Falko Hönisch, James Martin, Piotr Micinski, Stephen Owen

Lyon - 13 March 2015

Selected as one of three thematically connected works in the Opéra de Lyon's 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' March 2015 opera festival, the mysterious garden of Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten is a rather disturbing one, a paradise that holds altogether darker, twisted roots. The Lyon production of this rarely performed yet enchantingly beautiful work was accordingly dark, recognising perhaps the historical origins of Schreker's composition, as well as its continued relevance today.

The libretto for Die Gezeichneten (translated as 'Les Stigmatisés', the Stigmatised) was written by Schreker on the request of fellow composer, Alexander von Zemlinsky. The work is based on the play Hidalia by Frank Wedekind (famous as the author of Lulu), but the inspiration also comes from Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta' - a work that Schreker had already written as a dance-pantomime 'Der Geburtstag der Infantin'. Zemlinsky's identification with the cruel little tale stemmed from his own insecurities regarding his relationship with Alma Schindler, later Alma Mahler, and it would become the subject of his own opera based on the Wilde story, Der Zwerg (The Dwarf).

It's not difficult to see why Schreker's libretto may not have entirely suited Zemlinsky's intentions. It doesn't have a happy ending or even a noble one, but rather seems to suggest that there is a darker side to everyone. Even the best of intentions, corrupted by a sense of pride, love or even self-empowerment, can have unintended consequences. Schreker's own experience following the success of Die Gezeichneten would seem to follow a similar trajectory, the composer being appointed to a prominent position as a Music Director in Berlin, before falling victim to the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi party and seeing his influence and musical reputation slip into decline.

In Die Gezeichneten, the stigmatised outsider is Alviano Salvago, a scarred, hunchbacked nobleman in 16th century Genoa, who has created a beautiful island paradise called 'Elysium'. Unknown to Alviano, the Genoan nobility have been using the underground grotto of the island to abuse children that they have been abducting from the city. Aware that he cannot be loved for his appearance, Alviano intends to enhance his reputation by donating the island as a gift to the people of Genoa. The nobles appeal to Duke Adorno to preserve their playground, Adorno unaware that his own missing daughter Ginevra Scotti is one of the victims held captive in the grotto.

Alviano finds another powerful enemy in Count Vitelozzo Tamare. Tamare is in love with Carlotta, the daughter of the Podestà. Carlotta, an artist following her own independent spirit, has rejected Tamare and is attracted rather to the hunchback, wanting to paint him, but Alviano's lack of confidence prevents him from exploring whether the attraction goes any deeper than artistic. Indeed, once Carlotta finishes her experimental portrait of Alviano's soul, she seems to lose any further interest in the strange little man, but Alviano, flattered by the attention of Carlotta, is now a changed man.

Lyon's production, directed by David Bösch, spared the audience none of the horror of this dark fairy-tale nor the disturbing implications and undercurrents that run through the subject. There was little sign of any Romantic decadence or period glamour here. The true nature of the Genoan nobles' activities was laid out clearly, posters showing pictures of abducted children in screen projections, lusts openly displayed as the men shared videos and pictures of the abuse carried out, groping and grasping at horrified young women. The scenes of abused children in the grotto, when it is uncovered in the final act, are horrifying, some of victims wearing rags, some dead, others with blood spilling down their legs. And yet, for all the realism of the treatment, there was still an otherworldly hallucinatory aspect to the nature of the work.

Partly that's down to the themes being just as suggestive as the abstract dark fairy-tale nature of the plot, and partly it's down to how that is expressed in the music. The themes that rise to the surface are those of the abuse of power, the corrupting influence of power, the gratification of desires and the inevitable downfall of a corrupt society. But it's also about art, the power of art to explore beneath the surface and show the true nature of the human soul. If you delve into such places however, you can also be sure of finding some unpalatable truths. This fits with the post-war view of the barbarism unleashed by Great War, but its essential truth is borne out in Schreker's own later experiences, when through his Jewish ancestry, his own art would come to be regarded as 'Entartete', degenerate art, by the National Socialists, who would come into power and leave similar devastation in the wake of the Second World War.

The question of whether Schreker's own art with its grand, elegant flow of lush post-Wagnerian orchestration, is capable of delving into those places is debatable, but in Die Gezeichneten at least, it has a place. Tied to these themes moreover, it's not ambitious to say that the work is capable of being expressive of how these themes can be applicable to many different facets of life. If there's any kind of disparity between the dark decadence of the work and the surface beauty of orchestration, Schreker's score is revealed to be much more muscular and expressive than one would think under the direction of Alejo Perez. Art is transformative, but it can also be twisted and corrupted. The meansure of that is in the dissonance that creeps into this beguiling music, and Perez and the Lyon orchestra bring this out clearly, not letting the audience be entirely seduced by its chromatic spell, but reminding us that it has a sinister side to it.

It helps that the musical performance works in conjunction with the imagery on the stage, but the singing is also a vital ingredient in this work. Having previously known this work with a more heldentenor style of performance from Robert Brubaker in the role of Alviano Salvago at Salzburg in 2005, it was quite a change to hear the softer timbre and delicate delivery of Charles Workman in the role here. This worked wonderfully however, Workman's luxurious tones contrasting with Alviano's marked and disfigured appearance. It was a captivating performance, remarkably clear in enunciation and carrying across the huge orchestral forces in a strong expressive delivery. Magdalena Anna Hofmann impressed as Carlotta, a difficult role that has to reach some near-impossible heights, and if the securing of those notes wasn't pitch-perfect every time, she brought a degree of personality to the work's complex artistic female character.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Opéra de Lyon

Kirill Petrenko, Àlex Ollé, La Fura dels Baus, Clifton Forbis, Ann Petersen, Christof Fischesser, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Nabil Suliman, Stella Grigorian, Viktor Antipenko, Laurent Labardesque

Lyon, France - June 22, 2011

As someone who is not entirely convinced by the opera productions of the experimental Catalan theatrical group La Fura dels Baus – which in my experience tend to strive towards spectacle and concept (usually a rather ridiculous one) over fittingness, let alone fidelity, to an opera – I was a little concerned that Àlex Ollé’s talk of taking a symbolic view of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for this new production at the Opéra de Lyon since “a descriptive or figurative staging would make no sense”.  It’s true that the themes of the opera are internalised and conceptual in nature, but the idea of two of opera’s most famous lovers hanging suspended from wires -as is often the case in La Fura dels Baus productions - floating above the mundane reality below, was a worrying prospect. Surprisingly then, particularly since the rather minimalist stage directions for Tristan und Isolde allows for some extreme interpretations, it turned out this particular production is surprisingly restrained and almost traditional, saving its spectacle effectively for those moments where the romantic nature of the opera really merits those special effects.

Tristan und Isolde is indeed rather straightforward and single minded in the purity of its romantic notion of love, but that doesn’t mean that the opera is in any way rational or easily defined. It’s littered with a richness of symbolism, conceptual imagery and contradictory elements relating to day and night, light and dark, to questions of time and distance, to life and death, all of which simultaneously define the nature of love while at the same time acknowledging its contradictions, its indefinability and its irrationality. Any attempt to take in all these allusions would result in a cluttered concept (it’s to Wagner’s credit and genius that this isn’t the case with the opera itself, propelled as it is by its own inner musical force and coherence), and, in my experience, it wouldn’t be beyond La Fura to attempt to do just that, and add a few of their own half-baked concepts as well. Instead, and to my pleasant surprise, Àlex Ollé focusses, as you must, on one aspect of the opera and builts the concept around that. In this case, it is the romantic tug and persuasion of the moon, whose gravitational force affects not only the tides, but is believed by many to affect human moods, behaviours and irrationality in people, as well as hold an irresistible romantic presence.

Act 1 then makes use of a basic platform to represent the deck of the ship which is transporting Isolde from Ireland to Cornwall where she will be married to King Marke, with computer generated projections of the rolling sea on a screen behind. The platform revolves 360°, very slowly in one turn over the course of the First Act, while the moon appears as a blurred but bright sphere that solidifies in clarity as the nature of the relationship between Isolde and Tristan itself becomes clear. Superbly realised by the mood, the staging and the lighting, the emotional turmoil that each of them go through up to the moment of this realisation is reflected also in the motion of the waves, stormy at first, crashing against each other, until the moment of utter calm and abandonment arrives when they give themselves up to an expected death that does not come, but instead frees them of their inhibitions.

The moon becomes a concave sphere in Act 2 that stands for King Marke’s Cornwall, within which Tristan and Isolde’s love is trapped, as if within its own bubble. The contrast of darkness and light – the omnipresent imagery within the libretto for the Second Act – is reflected in the lighting and shifting shadows of trees that weave complex forms, building up to the moment when the burning desire within the protagonists explodes, and is expressed through a magnificent ring of fire effect. The illusory nature of their protective bubble collapses again through some fine projections that show the spherical edifice crumbling around them, as King Marke and his men discover the infidelity of his wife and his most trusted companion. For Act 3, this sphere is reversed, becomes convex, suggesting Tristan’s expulsion from the protective curve of Isolde and King Marke’s land, the desolation of the moon projected upon it evoking Tristan’s mood and state of mind, up until the moment that an extraordinarily effective glow of golden light is beamed through it at the consummation of their life in the death at the ‘Liebestod‘.

The singing was wonderful, particularly from Ann Petersen, who has all the necessary strength in her voice, but also a wonderful creamy tone that is deeply attractive, particularly for this role. (She will be singing Isolde for the Welsh National Opera at Cardiff in 2012, so look out for that). Clifton Forbis also has an attractive tone to his tenor voice, and although not always up to the level of Petersen, has all the necessary conviction where it counts. The two worked well together in this respect, and Forbis certainly made Tristan’s torment in Act 3 real and fully felt. The overall strength of the opera was rounded out by solid performances from Stella Grigorian’s Bragäne, Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s Kurwenal and Christof Fischesser’s King Marke, the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon conducted well by Kirill Petrenko. Although solid and impressive on all fronts, in the performance and in the appropriate tone found throughout in the staging, ultimately for me however the production didn’t quite have the full emotional force or find that spark of magic that lies at the heart of Tristan und Isolde. A wonderful production nonetheless, visually imaginative and deeply involving in a way that certainly held the audience in its thrall.