Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Vienna, 2015 - Webcast)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer

Wiener Staatsoper, 2015

Peter Schneider, Christine Mielitz, Hans Peter König, Ricarda Merbeth, Herbert Lippert, Michael Volle, Thomas Ebenstein, Carole Wilson

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 11 September 2015

Christine Mielitz's production of Der fliegende Holländer is not as conceptually abstract and modernised as her Parsifal for the Vienna State Opera, but then the questions of mythology and how they are applied are quite different in the two works that span the opposite ends of Wagner's 'mature' period. That's not to say that Der fliegende Holländer can't be radically re-interpreted - as in the recent Bayreuth production - but the 'meaning' or universal application that can be gleaned from such productions seems to be limited to central question of commerce versus the enduring place of myth and art.

Even in its recent half-way house production of the work at the Royal Opera House, Tim Albery's production was able to offer nothing new to those themes, but with Andris Nelsons conducting, it did at least recognise that there is potentially something more to be gained from a careful and close reading of the score. The true worth of Der fliegende Holländer as an opera is there to be found in its compositional structure and developing musical effects. Like all the best ghost-stories it's all about the way you tell it, and getting as close as possible to Wagner's voice is the surest way to successfully put across the work's use of myth and legend.

Which is good in the case of the 2015 performance of this production at the Wiener Staatsoper, because it has Peter Schneider at the helm of the Flying Dutchman. I've never heard Schneider attempt anything radical with Wagner - he doesn't for example have the personal flair that Christian Thielemann or Daniel Barenboim bring to the works - but in terms of how he understands the dynamic of Wagner's work and manages to bring out the full force of the traditional weight and colour of the score, I find Schneider most impressive. He always commands a terrific performance from the State Opera orchestra, and that's the case with this broadcast performance of Der fliegende Holländer.

Christine Mielitz's production seems to hold a similar view that there's nothing to be gained from working outside the traditional idiom with this particular Wagner opera. It appears to be determinedly old-fashioned and out-dated, and perhaps the work itself is somewhat old-fashioned. Wagner's first great breakthrough towards finding his own through compositional voice is a far cry from the Grand Opera stylings of Rienzi written in the same year, but with its use of mythology, its ghost story setting and its theme of Romantic yearning, it's rather more successful on an allegorical level than as a realistic drama. Arguably, the music can do allegorical here better than a stage production can.

If it looks a bit creaky then, that's how the imperfect work itself could be regarded, but the staging and direction are more than just functional. The all-purpose set for the through-composed version of the opera takes place entirely on the ship, its boards curling up at the edges of the stage. The Flying Dutchman is all-consuming as far as the opera goes, as much as its myth drives everyone 'on board'. The direction is not without its dramatic touches and, critically - for all the effect of a ghost-story - it gets them right in all in the key moments. The Dutchman's appearance with his ghost crew is appropriately spooky, and his other appearances are usually accompanied with eerie lighting streaming up from under the deck. Senta's presence, as during the duet with the Dutchman, brings other transformations, and her descent into the blazing fire in the hold at the conclusion is dramatically effective.

What you also have here in this 2015 production, and often reliably find at Vienna, is a good, solid singing cast, even if none of them bring any new dimension to the work or the characterisation. Michael Volle is a superb Dutchman; tormented and driven, he not only sings wonderfully, he also sustains the mood and drama convincingly right through to the conclusion. Hans Peter König is a deep, resonant and secure Daland; Ricarda Merbeth demonstrates great control, delivery and projection; Herbert Lippert impresses in the role of Eric and Carole Wilson is a fine Mary. As part of the Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home programme, Der fliegende Holländer consequently comes across reasonably well on the screen, but I would imagine with this kind of production it would be much more effective experienced live in the theatre.

Der fliegende Holländer was broadcast live from the Vienna State Opera as part of their Live at Home programme. The next live broadcast is Lev Dodin's production of Mussorgsky's KHOVANSHCHINA on 27th September (reviewed here in 2014). Details of how to view these productions live at home can be found in the links below.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Wiener Staatsoper, 2015 - Webcast)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Wiener Staatsoper, 2015

Peter Schneider, David McVicar, Iréne Theorin, Peter Seiffert, Albert Dohmen, Tomasz Konieczny, Petra Lang, Gabriel Bermúdez, Carlos Osuna, Il Hong, Jason Bridges

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 18 January 2015

If due attention is paid to the music itself, Tristan und Isolde is a work that can withstand just about any kind of stage production. Even in the case of a particularly outlandish concept - Marthaler's Bayreuth production being one of the strangest I've seen, but Bill Viola's is also unique - the nature of Wagner's music and its thematic core cannot be steered off its course. There's not a whole lot of room for re-interpretation here, but it still needs performers of considerable ability to get across the full impact of a work that was once deemed impossible to play. Musically and in terms of stage direction, the Vienna State Opera's revival of David McVicar's production, plays it closely by the book, giving full consideration to the actual beauty of the composition as an expression of its themes.

Primarily, I find with David McVicar that mood is the most important consideration. He always strives to establish that right from the outset, even if that means straying a little from the period or tradition. That's of vital importance in a work like Tristan und Isolde. Without adding unnecessary layers or jarring anachronisms, McVicar's production of Tristan und Isolde is fairly simple, stripped back and notionally representational, but it recognises the use and the strength of symbolism in the work and finds a way to convey that according to the libretto, the stage directions and the music itself.

Act I is fairly straightforward, the journey clearly on a ship and at sea, even if the ship is skeletal and of a reduced size for a crossing of the Irish Sea. There would appear to be some contradiction between the silver moonlit scene and the blood red moon, but that's not inappropriate in a work that lies well outside the laws of nature and where symbolism is prevalent. The moon with its gravitational forces as a symbol of passion of the flame of love that burns brightly between Tristan and Isolde, is clearly indicated by the ebb and flow of their encounters and their transcendence interruptus, the fire almost extinguishing at Tristan's lowest moment during the false sighting of Isolde's ship on Kareol. It inevitably burns brightest, glowing red, expanding to almost fill the sky, during the Liebestod.

Elsewhere, the predominant mood established by the production is that of darkness, Night being the other expression of the inverted nature of Tristan and Isolde's forbidden love, forbidden in that its fire is too all-consuming. Their love calls out for darkness, for the extinguishing of the day, for the extinguishing of life even. All three acts take place in near-darkness, lit only by the moon and by fires. It's Act II, where Tristan and Isolde attempt to express the nature of their condition and find that the meaning of words is unable to encompass the contradictory nature of that love, that McVicar turns a little more to abstraction, with a pointed tower on a stage of broken steps, crowned by a weaved circle of thorned wire. Whether you read religious significance into this, spirituality or transcendence, it at least represents the beauty and the terrible nature of their forbidden journey.

The simple abstractions and colours of the stage production reflect the majestic beauty and mystery of the score itself. Peter Schneider's handling of the score and direction of the orchestra could hardly be faulted. It was a rousing performance, measured and stirring, finding and presenting the extraordinary romantic surges in the score, holding back and letting the music assert its own power. Occasionally it's a little too cautious, the beginning of the Liebestod for example slowed down to let Irène Theorin take a gradual build-up that doesn't explode into soaring rapture as much as rest on soft and sweetly acceptance. It matches McVicar's directions for this scene, which has the moon swell and fall below the horizon, the rest of the world vanishing as Isolde calmly exits the stage without succumbing/transcending herself in the traditional manner. While he makes a mark there, and in Tristan pulling himself onto Melot's sword, elsewhere the stage directions are very closely followed.

The ideals that Isolde and Tristan represent are almost impossible to embody in flesh-and-blood singers. One of the greatest Isoldes of recent times is the incomparable Waltraud Meier, but since her retirement from that role Irène Theorin is one of only a few serious contenders, and she made a good case for Isolde here in Vienna. It's a stronger or perhaps more controlled performance than the previous Bayreuth one I've seen. Naturalism is not a consideration here, Isolde swinging between being alternately enraged and quickly composed, and Theorin glides between the ebb and flow of these two states with ease, vocally as well as dramatically. It's perhaps not as enraptured and soaring an Isolde as one might like, but that's fitted to the tone of the production here, and having seen her Elektra, she could well be capable of taking the passions in this role to other places.

Peter Seiffert is, alongside Robert Dean Smith, in demand as a Tristan when singers with the capability to sing such a role are thin on the ground in any generation. Neither of those heldentenors is perfect, but the ideal is close to impossible in any case. There are a few slight wobbles from Seiffert, much as when I saw him sing the role in Berlin a few months ago, but not many. It's a fine, committed performance here overall, working well with Theorin in the duets of Act II, strong, firm and expressive in the demanding and exhausting third act. Albert Dohmen's King Marke was smooth with a sorrowful gravity; Tomasz Konieczny's Kurwenal not always perfect but he was enthusiastically warmly received at the curtain call by the Vienna audience; Petra Lang a little stretched as Brangäne, but the ensemble overall was good for this production, fully getting across the necessary impact of this Wagner masterpiece on the screen, and all the more so I imagine in the house itself.

The Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home in HD season continues in January with productions of SALOME on 23 Jan and THE QUEEN OF SPADES on 28 Jan. February broadcasts include SIMON BOCCANEGRA, TOSCA, ANDREA CHÉNIER and an EDITA GRUBEROVA gala concert. There are details of how to view these productions in the links below.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Wagner - Tannhäuser (Wiener Staatsoper, 2014 - Webcast)

Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser

Wiener Staatsoper

Peter Schneider, Claus Guth, Kwangchul Youn, Robert Dean Smith, Christian Gerhaher, Camilla Nylund, Iréne Theorin, Norbert Ernst, Sorin Coliban, James Kryshak, Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Annika Gerhards

Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming - 2 November 2014

First performed in 1845, Tannhäuser was Wagner's first great success and notwithstanding the musical developments first advanced in Der fliegende Holländer, its scale and the coherence of its concept place it more recognisably in the familiar Wagner style. Fusing legends and mythology from a number of sources, Tannhäuser uses these stories as an examination of deep archetypal human desires and experiences and as an expression of Germanic character, but it's also a work that tells us a lot about the composer himself. Tannhäuser is inextricably linked with the philosophy and the struggle of Wagner as an artist, a revolutionary and a reformer.

The nature of the composer, the problematic and difficult and contradictory sides of his character and his thought, the expression of that in his music is perhaps more of interest to the modern-day opera-goer than what the 13th century writings of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the influence of Heinrich Heine and the arcane language of Wagner's own libretto. There are clear parallels between the figure of Heinrich Tannhäuser and Wagner himself as an artist struggling with and using his physical and sensual human nature as a means to reach a higher, spiritual truth. Setting himself against prevailing thoughts, customs and morals, he's a character that is fated to be misunderstood and forced into exile only to eventually return triumphant and vindicated.

Seen in that regard, Tannhäuser isn't the most modest portrait of the artist as a young man. There's an arrogant self-importance here but, arguably, all of Wagner's later works could be seen in that light as overblown ego-trips of a musical genius who was fully aware of his own talent and ability. It is worth examining then, just what makes them as great as they are, and Wagner's personal life can't be left out of the equation. It's clear from the greatcoats, top hats and neck-ties in Claus Guth's production of the music-drama for the Vienna State Opera, that the director is aiming closer to Wagner's own period, attempting to make the link between the composer and the work clearer and, hopefully, thereby making it a little more meaningful and accessible.

The settings are likewise 'closer to home' than the nymphs and satyrs in the grotto of Venusberg or the Wartburg castle of the middle ages in Eisenach. Act I is basically just a stage and a red curtain, Tannhäuser's time spent with Venus being rather more clearly signalled as the artist having an affair with his leading lady before coming to the realisation that he is neglecting his art and has to move on. Guth initially makes use of doubles on the part of Heinrich and Venus to emphasis the struggle between the sensual and the spiritual side of the artist, but this mirroring isn't taken much further on into the opera. The Wartburg scenes look like Wagner period Saxony or Thuringia concert halls, drawing rooms and bedrooms, but there's nothing that jars with the mythological setting of Wagner's imagination.

Other than transposing the period, Guth's production doesn't really appear to have anything more to add to the meaning of Tannhäuser, sticking fairly closely to the word and the intent of the libretto, but it has to be said that not much more actually happens over the three acts. That hasn't stopped other directors from imposing all manner of strange concepts on the work (I still haven't made much sense out of this year's Bayreuth production), and there's no major deconstruction of the author and the work in the manner of Herheim's Bayreuth Parsifal. It may not be an edgy or experimental production, but it's well designed, it looks lovely, and is appropriate and respectful of the work. Peter Schneider's conducting matches that tone, forging a close bond with the stage production. There are no surprises, it's played very much in a solid, classic Wagner style, and that seems appropriate for the purposes of this production.

There are however some notable differences with how Tannhäuser is traditionally viewed, and this creeps in more as the work progresses. Act II, Scene 4, for example is played like a scene from Die Zauberflöte, the nobles - masked and wearing cloaks - separating Tannhäuser and Elisabeth as if to prepare him a Masonic initiation. The Landgrave comes over as a kind of Sarastro, his purpose to win Tannhäuser away from sensuality and emotion to the side of order and rationality by fulfilling his destiny as an artist and Meistersinger. Act III however is the most powerful in how it expresses the reality against Wagner's poetic idealism. Tannhäuser doesn't make any literal pilgrimage to Rome, but is rather sick in bed having collapsed at the end of Act II. Elisabeth might be an angel who journeys over the hills to the Wartburg on a pathway to heaven in Wagner's eyes, but here, in her despair at his failure to "return", takes an overdose of pills and falls into an adjoining bed beside him.

The conclusion to Tannhäuser, if it's not exactly a happy one, should at least be spiritually uplifting. Guth's ending manages to be a little bleaker than most, but it does prove to be uplifting and incredibly moving. Wolfram's song (Act III, scene 2) becomes even more mournful as it follows the reality of Elisabeth's suicide sacrifice, particularly as it's sung impressively in this light by a wonderfully lyrical Christian Gerhaher. The only right ending then, since she has gone to meet Tannhäuser in heaven, is for Tannhäuser also to collapse and die beside her as the curtain falls and Wagner's Tannhäuser theme reaches its almost overwhelmingly beautiful conclusion. Whether it fits with the overall concept, whether it relates to the Wagner-period production design or not, it is nonetheless extraordinarily effective and, for me at least, it gives the work a more relatable human side.

The singers can contribute to bringing out that side of the work too, and that was well done in the Vienna production. As mentioned above, it was most evident in the performance of Christian Gerhaher, who received the loudest roar of approval from the audience at the curtain call. Robert Dean Smith gave his usual solid, untiring and finely sung performance. He faltered slightly when coming back after the long break before his appearance in Act II, but was right there on form again in the third act. Camilla Nylund's Elisabeth was beautifully and sweetly sung. The soprano role of Venus in the original 1845 version of the work performed here (as opposed to its scoring for mezzo-soprano in the 1861 Paris version) was however still just a little too low for Iréne Theorin to really sing with the necessary force. The chorus are also a vital force in Tannhäuser, and the Vienna chorus took up that role wonderfully.

The Vienna Staatsoper have an ambitious and impressive programme of pay-per-view live performances being streamed this season. The next performances being broadcast are La Bohème on November 7th, and Khovanshchina on November 21st.  See the Live Programme on their website for details.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Bayreuthe Festspiele 2009

Christoph Marthaler, Peter Schneider, Iréne Theorin, Robert Dean Smith, Michelle Breedt, Jukka Rasilainen, Robert Holl, Ralf Lukas

Opus Arte

It’s well known that Richard Wagner broke off the composition of his masterwork The Ring of the Nielbeung after the completion of the first two parts of the tetralogy (and up to the second act of Siegfried) in order to write his two other magnificent late music-dramas, Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg. There are various political and commercial reasons for this break, but there remains a clear connection between the themes of these two works and those of the Ring that suggests to me that Wagner needed another outlet for the powerful themes that couldn’t fit within the tetralogy – as huge and encompassing a life-work as it is.

Die Meistersinger seems to want to consider another aspect of the nature of German art and culture and the creation of something new from a revered tradition that is part of what the Ring is about, but approached in a very different manner with a comic tone that can’t be found elsewhere in Wagner’s work. Tristan und Isolde seems to me to be very much connected with the love between Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walküre, a deeper exploration of the nature of love that is so powerful and so beyond our control that it surpasses any rational attempt to contain it, master it or even describe it, not least when it is a love that defies traditional moral constraints, something no doubt inspired by Wagner’s relationship with his mistress Mathilde Wesendonck.

Difficult to describe maybe, but in Tristan und Isolde Wagner makes one of his most persuasive accounts of those mystical feelings and powerful drives, not least through some of the most sublime music ever composed – almost equal to his final masterpiece Parsifal – that weaves contrasting leitmotifs together into a near frenzy of emotional outpourings and conflicting desires. In the same way that Parsifal would dwell at great length at the question of pain and suffering as a redemptive purifying force, Tristan und Isolde contains little real action and little dramatic intrigue in its four-hour-plus running time, leaving plenty of room for the opera to wallow in the sentiments it is concerned with.

Explored in depth they most certainly are, but even so, the structure of the opera would seem to work against a conventional expression of romantic sentiments, contriving rather to keep the two lovers apart or on guard for most of the opera. In Act 1, Tristan strives to keep his distance from the Irish princess that he has promised as a bride for King Marke, transporting her from Ireland to Cornwall, refusing requests from Isolde for a meeting, even accepting when they do meet what he suspects is a poison meant for both of them. Isolde is furious that she has feelings for the young man who, despite his disguise, she recognised and as the one who had killed her former betrothed, Lord Morold, yet still nursed him back to health. To make reparation she plots to give Tristan a poison and herself, for her weakness, but her maid Brangäne switches the draught for a love potion. Act 2 consists only of a furtive encounter between the two secretive lovers that is eventually discovered by the King, while Act 3 sees their separation and re-encounter only in death.

In spite of, or perhaps precisely because of the unconventional nature of the love story, Tristan und Isolde is all the more powerful in its means of expression. The tension that exists in Act 1 is violently broken down by the imbibing of a potion – as a rather melodramatic device one can take this literally or not, but the intent is the same – that removes all constraints, pretences and reveals their true feelings for each other. It’s in Act 2 that the expression of those feelings is given voice – through the words, through the singing and through the music. The expression of that forbidden love is principally characterised by contrasts – in distance and nearness, in hatred and love, in darkness and light, in life and death, but principally through the day and night. Theirs is a love where, through its origin where they expected death in a potion but instead found the birth of love, everything is reversed and meaning turned upside down. Through their furtive encounters when the King is absent, signalled to Tristan by the extinguishing of Isolde’s bedroom light, theirs is also a love that is “consecrated to the night”, existing in a terrible but unquenchable yearning and state of tension that is only fully realised and consummated in the death that comes in Act 3.

With its expression of love as an endless eternal state thriving on contradictions, Tristan und Isolde is reminiscent in this way of Parsifal in its elevation of suffering to a mythical, mystic state, and Wagner’s musical expression of this state is simply astounding and also somewhat punishing (for the performers as well as the audience, the opera at the time of its composition being rejected by Dresden after fifty-four rehearsals as being impossible to play). It maintains an incredible state of mounting tension, constantly revisiting and revising leitmotifs, playing them off each other, only bringing them to a form of release in the climax of the ‘Liebestod‘. It’s a moment of utter musical genius that one can feel more intensely than almost any other dramatic operatic scene has ever achieved.

In terms of dramatic representation, there’s not really much you can do with Tristan und Isolde, which conversely means that an imaginative director can do just about anything with it. Bayreuth doesn’t really seem interested in staging traditional productions of Wagner’s operas, but in an opera like Tristan und Isolde, that shouldn’t matter in the slightest. It’s not a historical opera tied to a specific period, it’s a mythological opera about the mysterious forces of love. Christoph Marthaler’s 2005 production for the Bayreuth Festival, recorded here in a 2009 performance, finds a good balance between making the drama and the interaction between the characters intriguing to consider, while still being faithful to the opera’s themes.

From the costumes and the décor of the ships interior in Act 1, it looks like it is randomly set in the 1930s, but not over-realistically so – the sets there to create a specific environment that ends up working quite well, rising into three tiers for each of the three acts, maintaining a fluidity and consistency in the piece. The main visual theme however – considering its significance in the second act – is that of lights, from the neon ring “stars” in the sky in Act 1, to the light switches of Act 2, and the pulsing rings of Act 3 that could represent love or life, or the two combined in death. Obviously, this is highly conceptual in a manner that those who like a more concrete, literal stagy representation dislike, but it suits the nature of the opera, and certainly suits the nature of Wagner’s conceptual themes, without distracting from them or imposing a false reading. The performers fit well into the stage directions laid out for them – looking a little incongruous and a little uncomfortable at times with the eccentric mannerisms, but mostly finding a perfect accommodation between the words, the emotions and dramatic interaction with each other.

Iréne Theorin is fairly magnetic throughout as Isolde, capturing her haughtiness and conflicted feelings for Tristan in Act 1 with a degree of precision, and finding a similar level of emotion in the contradictory impulses of the ‘Liebestod‘ in Act 3. Through much of Act 2 she appears to be in a love-potion-induced trance, acting without volition, almost in a state of madness, which may not be how one would expect Isolde to be played, but her childish, playful eagerness to switch off the lights does capture a perfect sense of complete abandon to her condition to the disregard of any rational sensibility. Her singing is strong, only occasionally faltering, but a fine representation of her character nonetheless. It may take a while to warm to Robert Dean Smith as Tristan, but any doubts should be dispelled by his handling of the incredibly demanding final act soliloquy that he delivers magnificently with such impassioned yearning that you almost fear that he, like Tristan, is going to push himself over the edge. Michelle Breedt is a fine Brangäne, her singing strong, her acting in character throughout, and Jukka Rasilanen as Kurwenal delivers a touching performance, particularly in his sympathy for and fidelity to his master in the final act. If there are any minor irritations with interpretation and staging in the first two acts, all should be redeemed by Act 3, and that is certainly delivered here under the baton of Peter Schneider.

The Opus Arte Blu-ray looks good for the most part in terms of the 16:9 video transfer. There are some problems with the quality of the audio, but they are mainly down to the recording, positioning of the actors and the acoustics of the live performance on the Bayreuth stage. The minimal staging, the positioning of the performers and the surrounding walls give a somewhat echoing quality to the singing in places. In Act II’s “Isolde! Geliebte! Tristan! Geliebter!” for example, with Theorin and Dean Smith backed up against the walls, the singing fails to rise above the orchestration. The orchestra isn’t ideally clear either and doesn’t make a great deal of use of the surrounds, tending to be mainly focussed towards a centre stage. Extras include an optional conductor camera visible in a small box at the bottom of the screen (a pointless feature when Bayreuth productions otherwise do their utmost to keep the orchestra and conductor invisible in line with the composer’s intentions), as well as an illustrated synopsis and a 25 minute making of that looks behind the scenes at the staging of the production at Bayreuth.