Karlsson - Fanny and Alexander (Brussels, 2024)

Mikael Karlsson - Fanny and Alexander

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels, 2024

Ariane Matiakh, Ivo Van Hove, Susan Bullock, Peter Tantsits, Sasha Cooke, Jay Weiner, Sarah Dewez, Thomas Hampson, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Jacobi Loa Falkman, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Alexander Sprague, Justin Hopkins, Polly Leech, Gavan Ring, Margaux de Valensart, Marion Bauwens, Blandine Coulon

La Monnaie Streaming - December 2024

There is an element of semi-autobiography in nearly all of Ingmar Bergman's films, or perhaps it could be described as an element of exorcism in confronting the fears, concerns and formative experiences that determined his outlook on life. Whether it's the terror of death in The Seventh Seal or the silence of God in ...well, most of his work, that outlook is not a particularly optimistic one. Perhaps the most important formative experience for Bergman and for most people is family and particularly one's childhood experiences. It was only much later in his life, in preparation for what he believed would stand as his final film and testament as a career as a writer, director and filmmaker that Bergman was able to approach those youthful moments of joy as well as the more familiar explorations of pain and fear in a masterful and probing manner through Fanny and Alexander.

As much as they draw upon personal experiences, incorporating the root causes of many of his personal fears as well as his influences that he would unflinchingly bring to the screen as one of the world's greatest film directors, Fanny and Alexander of course has a much broader outlook on life. Which it would need to, since Bergman's experience of childhood in Fanny and Alexander, fictionalised as the well-to-do Ekdahl family in provincial Sweden in Uppsala, doesn't appear to have much in common with most people's lived experience. The challenge of adapting this to opera then would be to focus on and draw out the more universal qualities and experiences from the sprawling richness of the original filmed work, as well as retaining the sense of coming-of-age drama of a turbulent family experience that is to have a profound impact on how one child relates to the wider world as an adult.

With his sister Fanny, Alexander grows up in a wealthy family of businessmen and artists, all of whom gather at the start of Mikael Karlsson's opera version of Fanny and Alexander, composed for La Monnaie in Brussels from a libretto by Royce Vavrek. The family own and run their own theatre, managed by Fanny and Alexander's father Oscar. As the extended family in formal dress gather around the lavish Christmas dinner table prepared by a host of servants after a performance of a nativity play at the theatre, Oscar tells the children that "Outside is a big world and the little world in which we were born succeeds in reflecting the big one" while Alexander and Fanny sit at the foot of the table creating their own personal little drama with a miniature toy theatre. It's a little heavy-handed maybe, but it succeeds in establishing how the opera develops the theme that art doesn't just imitate life but seeks transform those human experiences. 

What this scene also establishes is the gulf between childlike innocence and imagination and the danger of its corruption when it comes into contact with the harsh realities of the world. Certainly there is a lifetime of troubling experiences to be processed as the children unwittingly eavesdrop on the private lives of their relatives, lascivious uncles philandering with maids, their grandmother reminiscing with an old love, one uncle facing ruin from failed business interests, another depressed at aging and the declining state of the world. It would take Bergman a whole career to process these issues - some his own experiences as an adult reflected here as much as fictionalised ones for other people - and confront their roots in this ambitious project.

The most harrowing experience for the young Alexander, as it would be for many children, is their first encounter with the death of a close family member. His father Oscar is rehearsing a scene from Hamlet when he has a heart attack and dies. For the young Alexander, seeped in the family's theatrical tradition, it's as profound an experience as Hamlet’s own horror of meeting his father's ghost, and indeed his own father will later make a similar ghostly appearance in the story. It's a moment wrapped in theatrical and philosophical meaning and suitably presented as such in the staging of this premiere opera production by Ivo van Hove. The Shakespearean allusions continue as Alexander's hatred grows for his step-father, their mother Emilie remarrying to an austere authoritarian and cruel man of the cloth, a bishop who demands they abandon their former life of privilege.

All this will be familiar to anyone who has seen Bergman's film or extended TV mini-series, which is a sign that the creators of the opera have succeeded at least in retaining the essence of the work. Both composer Mikael Karlsson and librettist Royce Vavrek have a good track record in adaptations of movie-sourced material, the two having previously worked together on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia for the Royal Swedish Opera last year. Musically Fanny and Alexander is recognisably in the same style evidenced in that opera, rhythmically and melodically propulsive in the idiom of John Adams, with electronic effects used for dramatic underscoring. It's less 'science-fiction' sounding electronics this time, providing rather an undercurrent that underlines moments of intense emotional stress as well as the ghost appearances, which are also heralded by shimmering bells.

What doesn't come across in the recorded and broadcast version of the production is the effort of the composer to make the opera a visceral theatrical experience. Modern technologies don't have to be restricted to theatrical techniques - and Ivo van Hove knows all about those - but can surely also be employed for musical effect in modern opera. That however is not something that most opera houses are equipped for and it does involve a considerable amount of effort and complexity to install surround speakers and deep subwoofer technology to make the audience actually feel the musical reverberations. There is also the challenge of synchronising the electronic elements of the score with the acoustic orchestra (the performers also wear microphones so that they can be mixed into the live sound design), but the impact of all that is lost in a streamed broadcast.

As well as employing cinematic techniques in his theatre and opera productions, Ivo van Hove is a director who is also very familiar with adapting Bergman and other filmmakers for theatre and often uses extended theatrical techniques like live cameras and projections. By comparison his direction of Fanny and Alexander for the most part feels rather restrained and almost traditional. I have to say I prefer when he is a little more adventurous and avant-garde. The fact however that the scenes have the necessary impact - minimalist but for a number of key scenes like the death of Oscar, the ghost story of the two drowned children and the remarkable effects used for the Isak and Ismaël scenes - suggests that he knows when to hold back in order to give those key moments prominence (underlined by the reverberating score) and does succeed in finding the best way of presenting the material.

That's surely the essential thing, but aside from the scenes mentioned above that are creatively handled, and despite what sounds like a wonderful musical interpretation, personally I didn't find either enough to hold attention as the opera moved into the second half. It was perfectly good, but I was perhaps too familiar with the movie version, so the adherence to the original felt predictable and something of a pale copy of Bergman's film, an unnecessary reworking that didn't really add anything as an opera. I felt like that at least until the stunning and remarkably effective choices for the setting of the avant-conclusion in the puppet theatre shop of Isak and Ismaël. Here Karlsson and van Hove succeeded in establishing the value of the opera on its own terms, which, as it should be, was in the realm of bringing music, drama and singing together to lift the source material to new heights.

That is no small part was due to a stunning performance from countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Ismaël. His extraordinary voice and presence brings that necessary enigmatic quality to the key moment when Alexander's eyes are open to how an artist can take those mysteries and unknowns, the personal traumas and experiences and use them to not only create art, but also how they can be a vital tool for survival. That is supported, as I have said, in the music score and in the stage direction with conductor Ariane Matiakh harnessing all those varied forces of the complex musical arrangements together.

The singing and performances are excellent elsewhere, relying on some veteran performers like Susan Bullock, Thomas Hampson (first time at La Monnaie) and Anne Sofie Von Otter for smaller roles in order to bring extra significance to their roles in the drama. The principal role in the opera however is that of Emilie, the children's mother, sung impressively by Sasha Cooke. Boy soprano Jay Weiner played Alexander exceptionally well with no stage-school mannerisms or over-acting. Although Fanny is not a large role, it was equally well performed by Sarah Dewez.

External links: La Monnaie-De Munt, Fanny and Alexander streaming

Puccini - Tosca (Baden-Baden, 2017)

Giacomo Puccini - Tosca

OsterFestspiele, Baden-Baden - 2017

Simon Rattle, Philipp Himmelmann, Kristine Opolais, Marcelo Álvarez, Marco Vratogna, Peter Rose, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Peter Tantsits, Douglas Williams, Walter Fink

ARTE Concert - 17th April 2017

It's too easy to write Tosca off as either a tawdry thriller or as a pure romantic melodrama. Those aspects are central to Puccini's verismo adaptation of Sardou's drama, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the characters have to be one-dimensional. There can be a little more nuance to how each of the three principal protagonists meet their fate in three of the most dramatic deaths in all opera, and a lot more to Puccini's dramatic music than heavy-handed underscoring. The Baden-Baden 2017 Easter Festival production of Tosca attempts to draw this out in Philipp Himmelmann's updating, while Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic make a strong case for the musical qualities of the work.

The conventional view of Tosca is a fairly black and white one of good guys and bad guys. On one side we have Scarpia as evil personified, twisted by the power that gives him freedom to indulge his lusts and baser instincts. On the other side we have the painter Cavaradossi as a brave rebel who stands up to arrest and torture by refusing to betray Angelotti, a colleague who has escaped from prison and hidden in the chapel where the painter is finishing a portrait of the Madonna (a very saintly enterprise). It's Tosca who takes Scarpia on directly, turning his lusts against him to buy time and escape.

All the main characters are however eventually doomed in their enterprises and it's not just cruel twists of fate; they can be seen in no small part to be the agents of their own destruction. For Tosca, it is jealousy that leads Scarpia's men to Cavaradossi's house. For Cavaradossi, it's a foolhardy embarking on revolutionary activism from what seems to be a matter of honour than for any real political conviction. Scarpia; well, his flaws are clear enough but his actions are twisted into some kind of delusional invulnerability conferred upon him by his religious devotion. In some ways, all of then can be seen to regard their fame and celebrity rendering them immune from any real harm.

As an opera, Tosca certainly merits more however than just playing to the stereotypes of sneering villainy and noble self-sacrifice. Those elements are an enjoyable element that are a necessary part of the character of the work, but there are other considerations that can provide a rather more thoughtful drama. The Baden-Baden production chooses to dispense with the Napoleonic flavour of the work for a more modern perspective, but it doesn't want to boil the baby in the reheated bathwater, to somewhat mangle a metaphor and likewise risk missing its intent.

Act I of the Baden-Baden Tosca takes place in a bright and airy cathedral, not at all like the dark ornate enclosures we are accustomed to seeing. There's space here for Cavaradossi to set up his computer and project the image he is working on onto a larger canvas. Tosca is dressed in a much more stylish bright red trouser suit and Scarpia, wearing a suit with his blond hair tied back in a ponytail, arrives with the finger-snapping efficiency of a business executive or politician with his underlings. Act II also presents a refreshingly modern outlook that gets rid of all the heavy drapes and candlesticks of a Napoleonic chamber.

There's no point in modernising Tosca however unless you can find a way to capture the same sense of menace and oppression that is in the original setting and Philipp Himmelmann finds a modern equivalence in the surveillance society of an authoritarian power. Scarpia's office is a wall of screens that are used to monitor and control the behaviour of its citizens. There is even a camera used to record his interrogations and, in an extra-creepy way, his seductions of women like Tosca that he can use to exert further influence and control over them. It's an effective enough modern context for how power is used and abused that doesn't in any way lessen the impact of the original.

Whether the singing meets similar expectations that an audience demand is another question, but again comparisons have little relevance. Everyone has their own favourite performances of past Toscas, and the cast here are unlikely to challenge any historic greats, but then opera is not a singing competition. That said, the performances are all good, and certainly effective in bringing a degree of characterisation and personality to the roles, as well as making sure that it serves to bring about the necessary impact.

Marcelo Álvarez gives the most assured performance as Cavaradossi. There's never been much doubt about his ability to sing this role before, even if he is inclined towards standing and delivering old-fashioned operatic arm-spreading gestures out to the audience. Here he is better directed and proves to be a much more competent actor: and it makes all the difference. It's a performance of intense feeling that has all the drama heroics you might like, while also singing the role exceptionally well.

Kristine Opolais may not have the commanding presence of some of the more notable Toscas in the history of opera, but by the same token she doesn't rely on the mannerisms of old. If she initially shows a few areas of weakness, they are scarcely worth drawing attention to and she gives a fine performance that grows in confidence as the drama progresses and her own character grows in response to the situations. There is no question that she hits every one of those key moments effectively and nails her 'Vissi d'arte'. Opolais also establishes an intense struggle of wills against Marco Vratogna's Scarpia in the second Act, where again the direction helps bring out Scarpia's calculating menace.

As is often the case now, Act III plays out with Cavaradossi being under no illusions about his fate, taking a more realistic view in spite of Tosca's protestations that she has their rescue all figured out. The use of lethal injections to the head instead of a firing squad deprives the audience of the traditional dramatic conclusion and from Tosca's famous leap from Castel Sant' Angelo, which is always a risky thing to do. Tosca's final cries however never fail to hit their mark, and with Simon Rattle harnessing the full power of the Berlin Philharmonic, the vital impact isn't lessened in the slightest. It all goes to show that you may get tired very easily of all the familiar imagery and costume drama, but Puccini's Tosca is bigger than that and the efficacy of its drama endures.

Links: Baden-Baden, ARTE Concert

Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht (Basel, 2016)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Donnerstag aus Licht

Theater Basel, 2016

Titus Engel, Lydia Steier, Peter Tantsits, Anu Komsi, Michael Leibundgut, Rolf Romei, Paul Hübner, Emmanuelle Grach, Merve Kazokoğlu, Evelyn Angela Gugolz, Stephen Menotti, Eric Lamb, Ansi Verwey, David Dias da Silva, Markus Forrer, Romain Chaumont, Emilie Chabrol

Sonostream - 1 October 2016

In the world of contemporary music, there are still few compositions that are more formidable, challenging and controversial as those of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whether it's his 'Helicopter String Quartet' to be played by four musicians on separate helicopters, 'Gruppen', his work for three orchestras or his various experiments and innovations with tape recordings and electronics, there are few modern composers who have stretched musical boundaries quite so far.

It's not surprising then that Stockhausen's major opera work Licht, written between 1977 and 2003, is also one that pushes the art form to its limits. A series of seven operas, one for each day of the week, adding up to about 29 hours of music, it's not surprising that Licht (Light) isn't performed more often, even in its individual day components. It's a major event then when a segment of Licht is performed and Theater Basel's production of Donnerstag aus Licht (Thursday from Light), first performed at La Scala in Milan in 1981, is the only full performance there has been of this work in the last 30 years.

It's no easy matter then to summarise what Licht, or even Donnerstag aus Licht is all about. It's certainly possible to describe what takes place in Donnerstag on a narrative level, but the musical element (which is far from conventional), the autobiographical elements (which appear strange and eccentric to say the least), and the spiritual element (which is a level that is intended to run through everything else, musical, narrative and autobiographical), are all wrapped up in religious symbolism and a great deal of narrative and musical symbolism that Stockhausen has developed for himself.

To try and describe it as simply as possible however, Donnerstag aus Licht describes the early childhood of Michael, a spiritual being or angel who has been born in the body of a man with the intention of growing up to be the saviour of mankind. That salvation will be through the gift of music. As the final lines of Donnerstag describe it, Michael says his purpose is "to bring celestial music to humans and human music to the celestial beings, so that humanity may listen to GOD and GOD may hear his children." Michael's ascension to this messianic role is however not an easy one and he is tormented in his progress by Lucifer, who despises mankind and is full of disgust that Michael has taken on the form of one of these low creatures.

Michael's troubled childhood in Act I is not that far removed from Stockhausen's own, his mother - who takes on a symbolic form as Moon-Eve, while his father is to some extent aligned with Lucifer - is incarcerated in an institution for mental illness after her husband accuses her of having an affair. Confined to an asylum himself, Michael however receives a vision that tells him he is a celestial being who is to be the saviour of mankind, providing spiritual nourishment through his music (a belief that would come to be another part of Stockhausen's increasingly eccentric personality in later life).

In the entirely musical Act II of Donnerstag aus Licht, Michael assumes his role of saviour in a three-form incarnation, one as a tenor singer (Peter Tantsits), one as a trumpeter (who does all the 'singing' for this Act), one as a dancer (there are three-part Evas and three-part Lucifers as well). He undertakes visitations to major centres around the Earth; to Cologne, to New York, Japan, Bali, India, Central Africa and Jerusalem. His appearances heralding his Mission are followed with his trials of Mockery, Crucifixion and ultimately Ascension. Act III sees Michael's homecoming, a return to his celestial residence. Worshipped by choirs and greeted by Eve, Michael performs a ritual of Light with plants. It's here that Lucifer makes his strongest play to turn Michael away from his mission in a fight and a bitter exchange, but Michael resists.

Quite how seriously you are supposed to take this is not really open to question; you're supposed to take it very seriously indeed. Theater Basel were even obliged to publish a statement from the Stockhausen Institute that largely approved of the performance of this major work by the composer, but expressed grave reservations that the tone was darker than the composer would have liked, that it was too earth-bound with not enough emphasis on the 'light' that embodies the spiritual side of the work. It's a very stiff and humourless statement and unnecessarily restrictive and intolerant of any idea of interpretation.

Lydia Steier's direction for Theater Basel does however stick closely to the detailed descriptions and copious notes that Stockhausen lays out for the presentation of Donnerstag aus Licht, as well as for the musical delivery, complete with its precise indications and enumeration of noises, clicks, syllables, symbols and gestures that are as significant a part of the score and the singing as any conventional instrumentation. The production even opens with a Thursday Greeting in the lobby of the Theater Basel before the start of the main performance, humorously performed here with Titus Engel and a small band dressed in 70s' outfits and wigs puffing away on cigarettes between, and it closes outside the theatre with a Trumpet Farewell after the performance.

Steier takes much of the actual opera at face value, although she does attempt to tie it to a more conventional reality than the high-flown ideals of the Stockhausen Institute might have liked. Michael's journey around the globe in Act II seems to take place here from within his own mind while in the asylum, his mission an attempt to re-establish contact with his catatonic mother. There's a bit of humour as the trumpeter Michael destroys Godzilla at the second station in Japan, but apparently there's little room for either interpretation or humour in Stockhausen's self-important vision of himself as a cosmic musical saviour. All the grandeur of the piece is there however, particularly in Act III's choirs and battle with Lucifer.

What the Basel production does manage to achieve then is the sense of Licht as a real operatic event. Evidently the streamed version is a very different experience to being present at the actual event, but the sense of this being an opportunity to experience a rare work of genuine interest and significance, and share it with the world is commendable. Barbara Ehnes's set design is impressive in its efforts to make the complex musical lines, vocal lines, and multiple levels of Donnerstag aus Licht easy to follow. A rotating stage allows the work to flow beautifully around a tower that is used for back projections and as a window into Michael's mind and scenes from his childhood. Whatever the merits of Stockhausen's epic work, at the very least you have the opportunity to see that vision staged and it's hard not to be impressed either with the ambition of the work or its execution here.

Links: Theater Basel, Sonostream

Barry - The Importance of Being Earnest

Gerald Barry - The Importance of Being Earnest

NI Opera / Wide Open Opera, 2013

Pierre-André Valade, Antony McDonald, Aiofe Miskelly, Jessica Walker, Peter Tantsits, Joshua Bloom, Stephen Richardson, Hilary Summers, Christopher Cull, Olwen Fouéré

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 30 October 2013

Welcome to Barry's world! In Northern Ireland, the name Barry's is probably most associated with a large amusement arcade and fairground ride attraction found in the seaside town of Portrush and formerly also in Bangor. The success of Gerald Barry's opera version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest obviously has no connection to Barry's Amusements, even if it does often feel something like a wild rollercoaster ride, but there is a sense that you do need to adopt the same sense of childish abandon and leave the real world behind in order to experience the pure exhilaration of sensations that are opened to you in The Importance of Being Earnest.

I have to admit I was sceptical at first. Yes I'd read all the unanimous acclaim when the work was first performed at the Barbican in London last year, and I was aware of all the 5* reviews that this new production - a collaboration between NI Opera and Wide Open Opera - had already received before its arrival at the Grand Opera House in Belfast, but I still wasn't convinced. You see, I had actually heard the work when the Barbican performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and wasn't exactly taken with hearing a cut-down version of Oscar Wilde's witty play raced through at break-neck speed and recited in high-pitched voices that rise and fall in and out of normal speech patterns according to the whims of the wayward orchestration. It was all a bit frantic and a bit mad.

Which of course was clearly the intention, as reports of some of the more outrageously anarchic stage directions that accompany the performance testify. There's the famous scene in which Cecily and Gwendolen converse through megaphones to the accompaniment of smashing plates on every syllable. Then there's Algernon and Jack having a lengthy discourse about the superiority of muffins over teacake sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. There's Lady Bracknell's outrageous account of Freude, schöner Götterfunken from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The fact that Lady Bracknell is sung by a bass is in this context not so much of a surprise, since there's often a man cast in the role even in regular performances of Wilde's drama. Just to stretch that even further however - a method that seems to be the by-word for anything to do with this opera - this production even dresses Lady Bracknell as a man.

None of which, I have to say, makes Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest sound any more attractive to a regular opera-goer than the idea of a visit to Barry's Amusements. The Importance of Being Earnest however proves to be an opera in the truest sense of the word. It doesn't stand alone on the music, it has to be seen performed, and more than just seen it has to be experienced. It's a true opera too in the sense that it gets to the heart of the drama and expresses the underlying sentiments though the music and performance far beyond the conventions of superficial drama and the recital of words. It just so happens that Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a rather absurd comedy and Barry wrings out every single ounce of comedy and absurdity that is inherent within it. To tremendous effect.

NI Opera and Wide Open Opera's production of The Importance of Being Earnest therefore relies greatly on a staging that not only recognises and draws out the absurdity of Barry's interpretation of the work, but it must contribute to it as well. When Lady Bracknell gasps out her shock at the nature of Mr Worthing's parentage - "A hangbag!" - it should have a visual and musical response that is commensurate with the tone. For Barry and Antony McDonald's staging here that takes the form of the bearded lady-gentleman actually vomiting the words into a bucket. And when she complains about the decadence of the French and the worst aspects of the French Revolution, it similarly ought to be accompanied by visual references that match the formidable lady's wildest imaginings and result in a decapitation, at least of a hat from a head (into the vomit bucket) if not actually going as far as to remove any heads. That's about as much restraint as you can expect from this work. I think there was even some twerking here between Gwendolen and Jack "Earnest" Worthing, but honestly I'm not exactly sure what that is.

Again, try as I might, none of this makes The Importance of Being Earnest sound the least bit appealing, but the rightness of it, the sheer compelling brilliance of it as you are actually watching, listening and experiencing it is undeniable. Undoubtedly you gain more from it if you are familiar with Wilde's original comedy and practically know the lines before they are devastatingly and rapidly delivered here. I think Barry expects an audience to have some familiarity with the play or at least some of its unforgettable witticisms, but just in case and for any younger members of the audience (of which there were many - another astonishing coup for an unapologetically contemporary opera), the adapted libretto was helpfully contained in full in the programme.

As for the actual production, you could hardly expect more from the wonderful contemporary-period designs, stage props and backdrop or from the performances. Aoife Miskelly and Peter Tantsits were appropriately sparkingly bright and high as Cecily and Jack, but the work is a comic gift for all the cast, with Stephen Richardson as a scene-stealing Lady Bracknell and Jessica Walker a scene-shattering Gwendolen. A true ensemble piece, Hilary Summers, Christopher Cull and Olwen Fouéré also made fine contributions that worked wonderfully in a work that has considerable challenges of pitch and timing. Comic operas that are funny are rare enough, but to find one where even the music itself is funny is pretty much unique, and Pierre-André Valade and the Crash Ensemble worked wonders in the pit of the Grand Opera House.

This then is opera and comedy at its most compelling in its wit and inventiveness. With so many comic antics, so much humour to pick out of the compressed libretto and so much to enjoy in every scene, you could scarcely take your eyes off the stage or let your concentration drop for even a moment. Not so much in a hyperactive attention seeking kind of way, but in the respect that every single word, phrase, syllable and note holds weight, significance and comedy and you didn't want to miss a single one. The "difficult" music is not so difficult in this way, but completely in the spirit of the work. In fact, while I'm sure that Wilde's comedy drama will hardly ever age or disappear from the stage, it's going to feel rather dry and stuffy to go back to seeing The Importance of Being Earnest performed "straight" after experiencing what Gerald Barry has made of it. That's quite an achievement.