Korngold - Violanta (Turin, 2020)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Violanta (Turin, 2020)

Teatro Regio Torino, 2020

Pinchas Steinberg, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Annemarie Kremer, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Norman Reinhardt, Peter Sonn, Soula Parassidis, Anna Maria Chiuri, Joan Folqué, Cristiano Olivieri, Gabriel Alexander Wernick, Eugenia Braynova, Claudia De Pian

Dynamic - Blu-ray

As well as the overwhelming and inescapable influence of the legacy left on the world of opera by Richard Wagner, German and particularly Austrian composers like Korngold were certainly under the influence of the intoxicating new ideas and expression that was in the air in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. It's only recently however that we are getting the opportunity to hear and see stage performances of the lush fantasies of composers like Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose careers were impacted or cut short during the rise of Nazis in the 1930s. The image of a glamourous decadent society in the operatic works of these so-called 'degenerate' composers is inevitably tempered by an awareness of the darkness in the heart of humanity or at least within human society.

Korngold was certainly something of a prodigy, showing remarkable talent in composition and orchestration from a very young age. The evidence of Die Tote Stadt alone, written at the age of 23, clearly shows just how incredibly accomplished his early opera works were before he left Germany under advisement and established himself as a composer in the United States. The recent revival at the Deutsche Oper of Das Wunder von Heliane (1927) was another eye-opening glimpse into those incredible accomplishments, another dreamy and slightly unsettling exploration of Freudian themes as well as revealing something of a debt to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The even earlier one act opera Violanta, premiered in 1916 and written when Korngold was just 17, is very much within the same decadent fantasy realm of repressed desires, lusts and fantasies, and the musical influence accordingly owes a great deal of debt to Richard Strauss's Salome.

The comparison with Salome strikes you almost immediately from the opening melancholic overture to Violanta in the rather decadent setting of a Renaissance carnival in Venice. Elegant, masked guests arrive at the House of Captain Trovai, indulging in pleasure and milling around while two uniformed guards discuss how the Lady Violanta is in a dark melancholic mood, one young guard teased for being in love with her. "He dreams of her white body, in which the moon plays the lute" certainly adheres to the imagery in Wilde's play that Strauss set so vividly to wild, decadent and powerful music in 1905. Korngold's music is not quite as harsh and dissonant, displaying more of a Puccinian love of melody and romanticism, but by the same token it doesn't have quite the same conviction or philosophical underpinning to push against conventional thought or morality.

The threat to their pleasure comes with the troubling news that the notorious womaniser Alfonso has returned to Venice. Despite the painter Giovanni Bracca's admonition that "Women frequent the shores of adventure" Simone Trovai is sure that his wife Violanta hates Alfonso for his baseness and his offense. Alfonso is certainly no Jochanaan; he seduced Violanta's sister Nerina while she was a novice at a convent and the young woman subsequently killed herself. Since then Lady Violanta has been sad, melancholic and avoided society.

Simone however can't help but be troubled to discover that Violanta has gone to sing and dance for this man with the intention of seducing him as a way to avenge her sister. Inviting him to their home, Violanta demands that Simone must kill Alfonso. Her husband is horrified that such he is being asked to kill a man who commands power and respect, but he is prepared to do it. All he has to do is wait for Violanta to sing a song that will be the cue to act, but when Violanta comes face to face with Alfonso, there is a danger that she too will be seduced by his nature.

There are variances in the situations but the musical cues of foreboding, hidden lusts and lush decadence are very similar to those of Salome, with ecstatic raptures woven around matters of debauchery and death. Which is not to say that Korngold doesn't have a way of making his own mark upon them. Like Strauss, the singing challenges are also considerable, not just for the principal role of Violanta but all of the roles are heavily demanding in the Wagnerian sense. In the 2020 Teatro Regio Torino production Annemarie Kremer is excellent as Violanta, giving a commanding central performance that has to be convincing and maintain force and seductiveness over the course of most of the hour and a half of the opera. Alfonso has to measure up to her, challenge her dominance in the same way as Jochanaan, but here with an almost lyrical Heldentenor Lohengrin-like purity of voice to go with his seductive and secretly vulnerable character and Norman Reinhardt captures that well with a fine performance.

Updating it from the Renaissance period to the 1920s the intention ought to be to highlight or draw on some of the undercurrents in the world of that time feeding into Korngold's composition, but there's no explicit references or obvious parallels made. Director Pier Luigi Pizzi however successfully contours that mood of seductive decadence and death effectively, with a hint of Klimt in the designs and costumes, Violanta wearing a voluptuous figure-hugging sparkling gold sequined dress. The whole of the one-act drama takes place in a room with long red and gold curtain drapes hanging over red velvet couches and there is a wide open circular window at the back like a dark moon showing gondolas gliding by. It creates an appropriately Styx-like quality to the location, spanning the gap between life and death.

Making the whole drama work convincingly, making the characters and the denouement credible and meaningful is a trickier prospect and it needs a little more of the edge of conviction that a director like Christof Loy can bring to this kind of work (Das Wunder von Heliane, Der ferne Klang). With fine singing performances, a strong central performance from Annemarie Kremer, and with Pinchas Steinberg bringing out the youthful musical splendour of Korngold, highlighting the characteristics that would become more familiar in the Korngold of Die Tote Stadt, the Teatro Regio Torino production give a fine account of this wonderful rarity.

Pizzi's set is dark and shadowy with bold burning reds, so it's a bit tricky to transfer to video accurately and consequently there are some variances in tone depending on the camera angle used, but the Dynamic Blu-ray HD presentation is generally very good at capturing the mood of the piece and the production. The LPCM stereo and surround DTS HD-Master Audio tracks are warmly toned, fully capturing the mood and colour of Korngold, although the recording is perhaps not quite as detailed as you might find on other High Resolution recordings. There are no extra features, but as usual Dynamic provide good information on the work and the production, including an interview with Pier Luigi Pizzi in the enclosed booklet.

Links: Teatro Regio Torino

Wagner - Rienzi

Richard Wagner - Rienzi

Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, 2012

Pinchas Steinberg, Jorge Lavelli, Torsten Kerl, Marika Schönberg, Richard Wiegold, Daniela Sindram, Stefan Heidemann, Robert Bork,  Marc Heller, Leonardo Neiva, Jennifer O'Loughlin

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Amidst the abundance of Ring cycles being wheeled out this year, the Wagner bicentenary has also provided a good opportunity to revisit and reconsider many of the composer's earliest works. This has resulted in a well-received production of Die Feen at Leipzig and a fine new recording in Frankfurt of Das Liebesverbot for CD, confirming that there is much merit in these works even if there is little of the familiar Wagner in them. The same could be said of the Meyerbeer-influenced five-act Grand Opéra style that Wagner employs in Rienzi, but composed around the same time as Der Fliegende Höllander, there are fascinating hints of the style that would develop in the composer's later music dramas.  This is something that is brought out very skillfully in this 2012 production from the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse.

In contrast to Philipp Stöltzl's production of Rienzi for the Deutsche Oper (the only other production released on DVD and Blu-ray) which went for bombast and grandeur to match the parallels drawn between the rule of Cola di Rienzi (1313-1354) and more recent historical dictatorships (most evidently Hitler and the Third Reich), the Toulouse production here sets out a more melancholic and mournful tone in Pinchas Steinberg's conducting of the work's famous Overture. There's also a sense of plaintiveness and maybe even defiant resistance, but that could be suggested more by the imagery that is projected here, showing images of the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as other popular uprisings in Paris, in China, in South Africa and right up to date with the Arab Spring.

There are however no other such modern references to be found in this production, which settles thereafter for a more generalised non-specific period, but one that has echoes to Wagner's own time. The Overture is all about setting the tone, and this one succeeds in bringing it back closer to the sentiments and intentions of the original work. As fascinating as Philipp Stöltzl's production was in relating the work to its historical legacy (most notoriously as Hitler's favourite opera), this production takes it back to Wagner's left-wing leanings and the revolutionary activities on the streets of Dresden that would see him forced into exile for a significant part of his life. This is a Rienzi that is still concerned about the nature and the exercise of power, but Wagner's position as a revolutionary on the side of the ordinary citizen - most evident in its huge choruses - is more clearly drawn here.

As the Deutsche Oper production demonstrated, any production of Rienzi is going to be defined by the decisions on what cuts are made to it, since the full five-act work would be almost impossible to perform (and I'm not even sure a definitive version of the work exists). The first thing to go is usually the superfluous Grand Opéra ballet sequences, but otherwise, the Toulouse production is a more intact or integral version than Stöltzl's. If the musical treatment and the theatrical intent are quite different, this production is nonetheless still very much stylised in its own way. Closer to the 19th century than medieval Rome (or indeed the Third Reich), the panstick-whitened faces remind one of a futuristic silent movie like Metropolis. In its striving for an ideal society that rules with benevolence and with balance for the needs of its people, this might not be far off the mark in striking the right tone for Rienzi.

There is however nothing as visually striking as Metropolis in this minimally decorated production. The Toulouse stage is not a large one and considerable space is needed for the massed choruses that take to the stage regularly throughout each of the five acts. That's not to say that the production doesn't hold attention however. The costumes are appropriate to help define the characters and succeeding in setting the people apart from the uniformly-dressed political factions (you can scarcely distinguish between the Orsini and the Colonna, which is perhaps the intention).  The lighting is superb, and the production works well enough to bring across what can be a fairly static opera largely comprised of pronouncements and declarations.

The singing too commands attention. The vocal writing is less bel canto in Rienzi than in Wagner's previous work, the Bellini-influenced Das Liebesverbot, but the roles are no less demanding on the singers, pointing towards the style of expression and continual flow that is found in later Wagner works. All of the singers deal with the demands exceptionally well, if not always with a great sense of personality, but then the characterisation is somewhat limited in this work. Torsten Kerl has made the role of Cola di Rienzi something of his own and he brings out a more human side to the character here. Marika Schönberg is a good Irene, but doesn't make as much of an impression in the role as Camilla Nyberg did in the Deutsche Oper production. In the trouser role of Adriano, mezzo-soprano Daniela Sindram however probably gives the stand-out performance, with a deep, soaring and expressive delivery that helps considerably in bringing some much needed life to the work.

It's this kind of performance that demonstrates that there are many facets in Rienzi that are still worth exploring. Rienzi is an opera that you want to be rediscovered as a misunderstood and neglected masterpiece, but it just never seems to live up to what we expect of a Wagner opera.  The promise of the wonderful overture asserts itself on occasion like a leitmotif throughout the work, but it never seems to deliver on its promise. Rienzi may yet be capable of being revitalised into something greater, but despite the best efforts of production here, this one still doesn't quite overcome the problems inherent within the work.

As you would expect, the High Definition presentation of Rienzi on Blu-ray from Opus Arte is most impressive. The image is clear and captures the production well. The audio PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks are fine, but there's some reverb in the stage ambience that dulls the sound a little. Without the LFE on the PCM track the singing is somewhat clearer, but the surround track has its benefits in a better distribution of the orchestra. The BD also has almost an hour's worth of interviews with the production team and the singers. Torsten Kerl deals quite frankly with the thorny issues of Wagner's controversial statements and the work's legacy in the Nazi era, but there are also interesting thoughts on the value of the work itself and the difficulties of performing it from the conductor and director.

The BD is full-HD, dual-layer BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.