Donizetti - Maria Stuarda (Salzburg, 2025)

Gaetano Donizetti - Maria Stuarda

Salzburger Festspiele, 2025

Antonello Manacorda, Ulrich Rasche, Kate Lindsey, Lisette Oropesa, Bekhzod Davronov, Aleksei Kulagin, Thomas Lehman, Nino Gotoshia

ORF2 broadcast - August 2025

For the little that they reflect reality, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to stage a historical opera in period setting and costume. There may be something in the drama that can be spun out to reflect the world we see around us today and the direction of contemporary politics, as in 2024 Vienna production of Don Carlo directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, but not all operas are suited to such treatment. Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, based on Friedrich Schiller's drama of the jealous female rivalry that exists between two English queens, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I for the heart of one man, is probably no more significant than feuding contemporary British Royals and as such likely to be something of deep indifference to most. What it does have to offer however is plenty of high operatic drama that is open to grand gestures and dramatic stylisation. We certainly get that in the 2025 Salzburg Festival production directed by Ulrich Rasche.

In fact it's an ultra-stylised production that has little of naturalism, much less historical accuracy. The stage bears two horizontally tilted spinning circular lightbox discs, each with a counter rotating centre, with no other props of any kind other than a third vertically tilted disc for lighting and occasionally projecting moody cinematic black and white closeups. The queens at the centre of the drama stand on each of the two horizontal discs, pacing against the rotation in stylised movements, Elizabeth and her court all dressed in black clothing, while on Mary Stuart's side they all dress in glowing white.

With its minimalist sets, bold swathes of lighting and stylised movements it's somewhat Robert Wilson like, but the gestures here are more operatic, slightly exaggerated, the intent different. There is scarcely a moment in the opera when they aren't pacing slowly, methodically, deliberately. It's perhaps an attempt to reflect determination of purpose, or you can the figures on a wheel of fate, where, as Elizabeth notes at one point on reading Mary's letter of supplication "Al ruota della fortuna tant’orgoglio impallida” ("On the wheel of fortune, even pride disappears"). Personal feelings and choices are not wholly determined by fate, but there seems to be some effort made to reflect their inner impulses in the male figures that pace the stage alongside Mary and Elizabeth. They aren't merely courtiers, not even chorus (the chorus remains off-stage), but as dancers (from SEAD, the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) making minimal movements and pacing perhaps in some way extensions of their emotional state.

There isn't exactly much in terms of real dramatic action in the first Act anyway to necessitate anything more in the way of props or movement. Essentially Mary, Queen of Scots, having been imprisoned for an attempt to overthrow Elizabeth and make her claim for the throne, sends the queen a letter via Talbot to the Count of Leicester asking for a meeting. Elizabeth contrives to bring this about during a royal hunt on the grounds where Mary is imprisoned, where emotions run high and verbal assaults are unleashed. It's all characters in deep personal conflict with their duty to the court and their own personal desires, with Leicester caught up between them. It's not much to go on, but Donizetti makes something great of it with huge dramatic swirls of orchestration that captures the personal torment and conflicted emotions of the characters. Even the jaunty rhythms seem to capture the furious beating of hearts. This staging doesn't try to make anything more of it than finding a way to express that on a physical level, personifying and bringing to the surface all the underlying explosiveness of the encounter.

Kate Lindsey as Elizabeth and Bekhzod Davronov as Leicester go a long way to bringing that circumstance to a head, Lindsey striding imperiously, extending hand gestures forbidding approach or entreaty, her furious glances towards Leicester and powered delivery alone capable of striking anyone down. If the white robed soprano is going to win hearts and minds over the black costumed mezzo-soprano in this quasi-historical situation she's got a real battle on her hands, but you wouldn't rule it out with Lisette Oropesa as Mary. Which of course is really what Maria Stuarda is all about. As I suggested earlier, battling opera divas is not much more interesting than battling jealous royals (of any era), but Donizetti's musical development and pacing has you gripped, not least because you know the Act descends into bitter recrimination and accusation that results in one of the most famous insults in all opera. As Mary delivers the killer punchline ‘Vil bastarda', even I felt trepidation at how Kate Lindsey's Elizabeth was going to take it.

Not terribly well obviously, history at least recording Mary's fate on the executioner's block, but Donzetti's intention is rightly to focus on depicting this as pure operatic entertainment and that is exactly what we get here from the fine singing and the musical direction of Antonello Manacorda, leading up to that showstopping confrontation and its delivery as a sextet. Yes, it's the centrepiece of a great work, a thrilling outpouring of a fictional dramatisation of naked anger that you could not imagine playing out this this way in reality in private or in public (yes, that's sarcasm), but it's the masterful way it is played out in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and in the effective staging here that reveals it for the brilliant work it is.

The second Act has much to deliver as well, even though it's just a long build-up to the inevitable execution. And even though there is again little to differentiate the dramatic stage presentation and lack of props established in the first Act, the production (and singing of course) still manages to draw all the internal emotional intensity that underlies the scene. The wheel indeed seems just as appropriate here, the relentless march of history, the enmity and rivalry between the two queens setting them on a path towards an inevitable conclusion. It perhaps lacks the fire that was lit in the first Act, a consequence of how the drama is written rather than any flaw in the presentation, but the second Act has a compelling purposeful drive in Mary’s acceptance and in Elizabeth’s unwavering determination to carry though on her decision to execute her rival.

Despite Mary delivering the decisive blow in Act I for a standing count rather than a knockout one, personally I thought Kate Lindsey was winning this first round on points. (No, I'm no more a fan of boxing than battling opera divas). More accustomed to seeing her in trouser roles, Kate Lindsey is now a formidable mezzo-soprano leading voice, her delivery - under difficult stage directions where she never stops pacing - powerful and controlled, bringing real depth to the character despite all the stylisation of movement. Lisette Oropesa however commands the audience's sympathy for Mary in the Second Act, delivering all the passion of the prayer (preghiera) and aria del supplizio ('D'un cor che muore reca il perdono'), ensuring that both women have the opportunity to show the challenges of their respective political and personal positions, in dramatic terms at least, if not in terms of historical reality. There were superb performances also here from Bekhzod Davronov as Leicester and Aleksei Kulagin as Talbot, and from Thomas Lehman and Nino Gotoshia in supporting roles as Cecil and Anna.

External links: Salzburger Festspiele

Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Salzburg, 2025)

George Frideric Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Salzburger Festspiele, 2025

Emmanuelle Haïm, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Christophe Dumaux, Olga Kulchynska, Lucile Richardot, Federico Fiorio, Yuriy Mynenko, Andrei Zhilikhovsky, Jake Ingbar, Robert Raso

3Sat Livestream - August 2025

Dmitri Tcherniakov's direction of the new 2025 Salzburg production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto appears to be drenched in irony. Perhaps not surprisingly, as the director rarely takes opera libretti at face value, particularly when the truth of human nature that they seek to present can often be obscured by poetic declamation and sweet music. That is no impediment to Handel, who composed some of his finest music and managed to get to the heart of the complex relationships between people in love and in war, but inevitably we have a different attitude towards modern warfare and dictators now and the impact their actions have on ordinary people. It is necessary - particularly in our current times - to acknowledge that and get it across if you want Handel's opera to say something meaningful about today rather than being an operatic museum piece.

Tcherniakov, as a Russian born director, has addressed such issues before and met them head-on in what would have otherwise been a problematic production of Prokofiev's War and Peace being staged in Munich while Russia was attacking Ukraine not too far away. Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto of course needs no such translation, the composer in his third opera making the complicated situation of Caesar and Pompey's war in Egypt involving Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra perfectly clear. All the hidden sentiments, rivalry, lusts and cruelties are exposed or at least hinted at, but there is a danger that dated but nonetheless heartfelt expressions such as Ptolemy describing Caesar in terms like "This perfidious, unworthy miscreant" might lack the necessary weight behind them that the situation demands. 

The war between Caesar and Pompey might be over, but the 'fall-out' from their power struggle remains, and Tcherniakov chooses to present that in terms of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. If there is an irony in that situation it's a grim one, rendering the participants pathetic figures fighting over a wasteland. Whether you think that's appropriate for what happened in 45 BC or even whether it's relevant to the time of the original composition in 1724, it certainly hammers home the potential endgame of what is being played out on the global scene today. All the main players have been evacuated to a network of underground bunkers (the ordinary citizens presumably left to fend for themselves above ground), their opening praise to Caesar's accomplishments striking that first note of irony. As Cesare, Cleopatra and Tolomeo all strike airs singing airs, the others seem to have little time for their self-delusions; the reality of Pompey's death, Caesar's ambition and Cleopatra's self importance having little truck with the others, not least the grieving Cornelia, the vengeful Sesto and the self-serving Achilla.

The set design and directorial characterisation gets to the heart of the contradiction of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. There is a bloody and violent war going on, there is a struggle for power, a battle of egos, a struggle for dominance, all filled with anger, betrayal and plotting. There is also a measure of some kind of greatness and beauty here with sentiments praising fidelity, beauty, love and genuine human feeling. Handel reconciles those opposing but complementary forces in his music. It's simply a beautifully conceived and composed opera, but of course that is hard to view in the same way several hundred years later, several millennia after the original figures appeared on the world stage, particularly when we are likely to have a different view of how historical events played out in opera compare to real life as we know it. Still, the opera stage is no place for 'real life'; the challenge rather is to make it better and truer to life, if you think such a thing is possible. Handel proves that it is, and the director has to use that key resource to his advantage.

Aside from his great work with Russian opera (outstanding with Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovitch, Borodin, Prokofiev), I'm not convinced that Tcherniakov has a similar feeling for western operas, taking more of a combative approach, breaking them down, stripping them of mannerisms and adornments, viewing them in terms of middle-class psychodramas, turning them around and turning them on the bourgeois western audience who frequently reward the production team with boos for their trouble. A simplistic analysis of Tcherniakov's intent maybe, but although it can sometimes detract from the deeper purpose of the works, his approach still produces interesting results. It certainly worked when Tcherniakov last worked side-by-side with musical director Emmanuelle Haïm on the Gluck Iphigénie en Aulide/Iphigénie en Tauride diptych for Aix-en-Provence last year. Like that production, I don't think Tcherniakov's approach subverts Handel's vision or detracts from the beauty of the work, but I don't think he really adds anything to it either or fully translates it for a modern audience.

Baroque often needs a little more dramatic inventiveness and Tcherniakov's bunker setting really just closes it in. An example of his approach is in Act II, Scene III which the original libretti describes as "Cornelia, con piccola zappa nelle mani, che vien coltivando i fiori" ("Cornelia, in the garden of the seraglio with a small hoe in her hand cultivating flowers"). Here Cornelia sings 'Deh. Piangete, oh mesti lumi, già per voi non v'è più speme' on a mattress where her son Sesto has been trussed up and dumped at her feet as if dead. Unquestionably Tchernaikov's version is a more dramatic alignment with the sentiments expressed by Cornelia, but it's the aria itself and the person singing it that expresses the horror of the situation and that's done here by Lucile Richardot. A baroque specialist, she may not be an ideal Cornelia but she has an interesting expressive dramatic harshness here that suits the character. Tolomeo’s attempted rape in the subsequent aria 'Sì, spietata, il tuo rigore…' does indeed also reflect the intent of the aria and gives the resultant fury of Sesto justification, so Tcherniakov knows exactly how to draw the most out of the scene, perhaps taking it even further than necessary into suggestions of an incestuous nature. That's the general approach taken elsewhere here.

For Scene VII in this Act likewise, Tcherniakov translates Cleopatra’s 'Venere bella' from a "pleasure garden" to Caesar’s bed (or mattress here), which again is realistic and much less "flowery". Each scene is balanced to strike a good balance between realistic behaviour and the operatic flourishes, the singers playing with great intensity. Like his work on War and Peace, Tcherniakov manages to do this by tapping into the fragile state of madness that reflects the current political climate and reflect it on the stage without foolishly trying to represent it with explicit references. Despite a few shock interruptions however and the onstage attempted assassination of Caesar, the grey oppressiveness of the bunker situation is unable to compensate for the otherwise inertness of dramatic action. Since the opera is largely characterised by declamatory arias, ariosos and recitative however perhaps that's too much to expect.

But again, I stress, what can't be denied as hugely effective is the beautiful musical and lyrical content that Handel has arranged. Above everything it's superbly played under the musical direction of Emmanuelle Haïm and in the wonderfully cast and well directed acting of the singers, all of which makes it a gripping and engaging Giulio Cesare. It's impossible to single out any of the cast as more deserving of praise, but evidently the key roles are all impressive. There's the vulnerability and charm of Olga Kulchynska's Cleopatra seeking love and alliance; the lustful imperiousness nobility of Christophe Dumaux's Cesare; the inner strength and dignity with which Lucile Richardot's Cornelia endures her torment and grief; the wonderfully sneery arrogance and casual cruelty of Yuriy Mynenko's floppy haired public schoolboy Tolomeo. Even the secondary roles of Andrei Zhilikhovsky's Achilla and Federico Fiorio's particularly excitable and impetuous Sesto are exceptionally good  with individual interpretations that contrast and complement each other. The roles of Nireno and Curio are necessarily reduced here, but also sung well by Jake Ingbar and Robert Raso. You would of course expect this high standard at Salzburg, and unquestionably this is opera performance and interpretation of the highest order.

External links: Salzburger Festspiele

Verdi - Macbeth (Salzburg, 2023)

Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth

Salzburger Festspiele, 2023

Philippe Jordan, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Vladislav Sulimsky, Tareq Nazmi, Asmik Grigorian, Caterina Piva, Jonathan Tetelman, Evan LeRoy Johnson, Aleksei Kulagin, Grisha Martirosyan, Hovhannes Karapetyan

ARTE Concert - 29th July 2023

By now, we are probably all familiar enough with Krzysztof Warlikowski's bag of tricks to have some idea of how his opera productions are likely to play out. They are almost always willfully subversive of the stage directions, imposing a period updating on them, usually relating to whatever movie is currently popular or indeed willfully subversive, such as David Lynch or Nicolas Winding Refn. Pasolini's Salò too is often a favourite for opera directors, not just Warlikowski. The question is whether his approach is ideally suited to the tone and themes of the opera or whether it brings anything new out of them, but often it can be surprisingly effective. I'm not convinced that the directness of Verdi works from this kind of overly elaborate approach, even in a work as emotionally complex as Don Carlos, where I felt Warlikowski was lost for ideas. In the case of his Macbeth for Salzburg, it has the disappointing and for this opera the somewhat unfortunate effect of rendering it essentially bloodless.

Ordinarily, failing to live up to Verdi's dark tone for Macbeth would be almost fatal, but there are some compensations here. Up until relatively recently it was a largely neglected Verdi opera, particularly in the UK where it was considered lacking the depth and poetry of Shakespeare, too condensed into little more than the sound and fury of the play. Now it can be recognised for the magnificence of its set pieces and the musical attunement to the work's dramatic power. It's the consummate blood and thunder Verdi opera, one that also provides great roles and arias, notably for Lady Macbeth, and a famous chorus in 'Patria oppressa'. If nothing else, the greatness of those elements remains apparent in the Salzburg production, although muted slightly by the musical and stage direction.

Warlikowski chooses to align this production of Macbeth with Pasolini's film Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex), both in term of its visual look and period inconsistency, as well as using it as a way to delve into the underlying psychology for the murderous couple deriving from their inability to have children. This is hinted at in Shakespeare's drama but never made explicit (although many productions have similarly explored this angle). Lady Macbeth is shown visiting a gynaecologist in similar period costume to the framing 1920's Italy of Pasolini's Oedipus Rex, and being told she will never have children. That film is also referenced explicitly in a clip of a mother breastfeeding her baby. This presumably is the suggestion for Macbeth's murderous campaign against any successor, incited by jealousy and fear of being supplanted at the breast by his or indeed any child. It's an idea certainly, but whether it holds up in terms of Shakespeare or even Verdi's version of Shakespeare is debatable/doubtful.

Krzysztof Warlikowski retains the 1920s imagery for the main part of the production design, giving it also something of the feel of the Godfather or a 1930s' Hollywood gangster movie. Mixing periods, a widescreen television is used for Macbeth's viewing of Edipo Re (setting off his fear of a successor), which could stand in for a projector, although no effort made to make it look so. Live projections and filmed segments are of course used (a still photo from the production shows Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew is also referenced, but I didn't see this while viewing the production from the online steaming) and this is effective not just for showing behind-the-scenes views like the killing of Duncan, but helping lay the psychological groundwork and set mood. It's a dark mood certainly, but all of the suggestion and explicit explaining avoids a more direct and dangerous bloodletting drama, and the murder scenes of Duncan and Banquo consequently fall rather flat.

I'm not sure what to make of the weird sisters chorus in this production either. A mix of women in dark sunglasses and children wearing sinister masks, they seem to hint at a more radioactive doom for no apparent reason. The banquet scene for the appearance of the ghost of Banquo is more effective, the period used to establish Lady Macbeth like a vampish singer in Hollywood movie night club. Macbeth's breakdown is effective as he reacts to a balloon where he has unconsciously drawn Banquo's face, although its impact on his high society guests less apparent. Serving up a dead child at the climax of breakdown hits the mark however, and this becomes a running theme, with children in masks continually haunting Macbeth.

This leads to an unconventional approach to 'Patria oppressa', which becomes less about a downtrodden and despairing people rising up against the horror that Macbeth has inflicted upon a nation but is tied nonetheless into the obsessive idea of total genocidal destruction through its connection to the murder of Macduff's family. The chorus remaining offstage, replaced by about 20 children of Macduff dressed all in white underwear, who all partake of a drugged drink passed around by their mother to end their lives. Macduff's despair is somewhat heightened then - 'Ah, la paterna mano' suitably heartfelt and expressive in Jonathan Tetelman's delivery - as the bodies of the innocents are laid out. It's certainly effective as such, but some might think this traditional highlight of the opera has been underplayed.

A lot of the impact being dissipated is I feel partly due to the large size of the Grosses Festspielhaus stage. Warlikowski is partly forced to fill the large space with projections and supernumeraries, but Macbeth is an intense intimate drama that doesn't scale up effectively. Or not here in any case. Verdi's music often makes up for such failings, but filling in for an unwell Franz Welser-Möst, Phillippe Jordan's conducting felt a little too slick in places. Although the drive and impact was effective in the key scenes, there was perhaps not enough unbridled passion in it for me, which I think is also the main failing of the direction also. 

One place where there were few such qualms was in the singing. The huge choral forces certainly filled the space in vocal presence and the principals similarly all had the personality and singing ability to make an impression. Asmik Grigorian is superb as Lady Macbeth. Along with recent performances over the last few years, particularly at Salzburg, where she has worked with Warlikowski before on Elektra she is proving to be one of the best dramatic sopranos in the world. She doesn't quite bring the full fireworks you would like for a Lady Macbeth, but I would fault the direction on that point, as her acting and singing delivery can scarcely be faulted. The same could apply to Vladislav Sulimsky's Macbeth. It's a solid performance, the passion and fear are evident when the direction is effective (the banquet scene), less so in others (the assassination of Duncan). Bass Tareq Nazmi's Banco was astonishing in his depth and lyricism. It's unfortunate that Banco is not given a greater role and is killed off too soon, but we at least were able to enjoy an excellent 'Studia il passo, o mio figlio'.

If it was a bit of struggle to connect Warlikowski's ideas, direction and production design to Verdi's opera and at the same time make it fully inhabit the stage, the production gained force as the opera progressed. The downward spiral of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth was well depicted, the murder of Macduff's family during ''Patria oppressa' hit home, as the opera made its way towards its suitably dramatic conclusion. I can't help feel that a little less over-thinking in the direction and the conducting, a smaller scale production and a little more trusting in Verdi's score would have been much more effective.

External linke: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert, Photographs - © SF/Bernd Uhlig

Mozart - Don Giovanni (Salzburg, 2021)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

Salzburger Festspiele, 2021

Teodor Currentzis, Romeo Castellucci, Davide Luciano, Mika Kares, Nadezhda Pavlova, Michael Spyres, Federica Lombardi, Vito Priante, David Steffens, Anna Lucia Richter

ARTE Concert - 8th August 2021

There are many facets to Mozart and Da Ponte's trilogy of operas, many facets of human behaviour that can be explored in them, universal traits that provide no easy answers to questions that on the surface can appear - and be played - as comedies but which underneath touch on some very disturbing subtexts. Don Giovanni can be depicted as villain or a victim of his own lusts - someone who loves too much, as someone who just isn't used to taking no for an answer, or in today's view, as a sexual predator and abuser of women. Don Giovanni is always worth a fresh perspective, but - perhaps more controversially (and it isn't often you can say that there is something more controversial in a production than the stage direction of Romeo Castellucci) - Mozart's score is also worth looking at in new ways. 

Teodor Currentzis has been upsetting those who like their Mozart played in the familiar Classical style for quite a while, but he's certainly not the only conductor finding more interesting facets to Mozart using historically informed direction on period instruments and using reduced ensemble orchestration. With Mozart's opera seria works that might be more palatable - and Salzburg have presented interesting Currentzis directed productions of La Clemenza di Tito in 2017 and Idomeneo in 2019 - but Don Giovanni is a different matter altogether. Rather than simply playing it to a way that has become rote and unadventurous over the years, Currentzis again seeks new ways to explore and express the wealth of character that is within Mozart's music. Forcing the listener to really listen to it. Making it feel fresh, shiny and new again. Like a virgin.

There's a theme that a director like Castellucci would certainly seize upon in a work like Don Giovanni, but there are less obvious ways to approach that. And there's maybe an allusion to stripping away the image of the sanctity of Mozart being forced into accepted conventional interpretations in the opening scene of Salzburg's Don Giovanni. In a white temple like setting, workmen strip away the Christian iconography of a church, leaving the elegant bare white edifice to show its basic underlying structure, ready to be built upon anew. A flame burns away any remaining holiness and indeed, the first person seen on the stage is a naked woman (well, it is Castellucci), one presumably no longer a virgin, since she has evidently been seduced/raped by Don Giovanni.

Rather than keep it simple and minimal, Castellucci then bombards the stage with all manner of effects, symbols and supernumeraries. A car crashes down on to the stage, a wheelchair, basketballs, a broken piano. Don Giovanni, Leporello and the Commendatore are dressed in white, while the avenging Donna Anna comes storming on in black with a retinue of Furies that surround and strive to bring Don Giovanni to justice for his crimes against women. It looks like Don Giovanni has juggled too many basketballs this time. The recitative as Don Giovanni and Leporello make their escape is played out with cartoon eyes on a black screen, Donna Anna mourns the crutch of Commendatore, Don Ottavio pours red powder on his arms and punctures a line of basketballs in his promise of securing revenge.

This is evidently not the Don Giovanni you might be familiar with but neither is it inappropriate to the tone of the work and its treatment by Mozart and da Ponte. It might do something different with the visuals and the pace, the use of instruments and emphasis of the music, but it still engages with the themes and the tone of the work. It's not so much Don Giovanni's debauchery and libidinous lifestyle that are condemned here as much as his failure to accept responsibility for and deal with the consequences of his actions. He leaves death and the destruction of lives behind him (something seized upon with a more political slant in Michael Haneke's version), including a suggestion that he has abandoned a pregnant Donna Elvira (Federica Lombardi doubled with a naked pregnant woman), while a child also pursues Don Giovanni on the stage.

The lightness of the treatment and the heaviness of the underlying implications is borne out in the music. Leporello's 'Madamina, il catalogo è questo' has a lovely lightness, the piano weaving in and out of the musicAeterna arrangement, the beauty of the aria contrasted with the sinister note behind the revelations of conquests. Castellucci provides plenty of contrasting imagery, mixing the absurdity with the comedy, with pointed symbolism and contemporary references that include a photocopier. Likewise he brings Michael Spyres's Don Ottavio on wearing a Danish mountaineer outfit (a familiar inscrutable symbol also used in his Moses und Aron) accompanied by a poodle. It looks ridiculous (several characters have a live animal avatar - Masetto a mouse, Don Giovanni a goat) but takes nothing away from the chilling account of Donna Anna on the recognition of her father's murderer, the scene re-enacted as a Greek tragedy.

Which is something that the legend of Don Giovanni could certainly be said to aspire to, it not being entirely out of place with the opera seria reworkings of mythology that preceded Mozart in the earlier part of the 18th century. Just as Mozart brought a contemporary edge to that genre in his progressive music and Da Ponte in the humanisation of the drama while still retaining the otherworldly elements that elevate it to grand drama - so Castellucci brings a corresponding touch of re-interpretation of an epic myth for a modern age while reflecting and respecting the underlying complexity of the work's blend of surrealism, comedy, tragedy, symbolism and instruction on the consequences of moral dissolution. In an expansive gesture that brings 150 women as extras to the stage, Don Giovanni here is held to account for his crime not by a stone statue, but by the women he has wronged. 

Teodor Currentzis seems to be doing his best to submerge as much as possible any of Mozart's familiar melodic embellishments. Whether this is for the sake of upsetting those who like their Mozart played in a conventionally acceptable way, whether it's out of sheer bloody-mindedness to stake out is reputation for being a fearless re-interpreter of Mozart, or whether he finds it appropriate to reevaluate and strip away the varnish of mannerisms that the work has accrued over the years and present a more historically informed account of the score is something the musicologists can argue over. Aligned with the drama an Castellucci's sensibility, the music however doesn't lose a fraction of its distinctive Mozartian qualities of beauty, sensitivity or dramatic flair.

Think what you might also of Romeo Castellucci's contribution, whether it adds any value or provides any new insights but - much like his stunning Die Zauberflöte for La Monnaie - it's certainly original, often spectacular and rarely dull, always surprising with some new idea that puts emphasis on different aspects of the work. It's also not without the occasional bit of flash/bang showmanship, which Mozart wasn't beyond employing himself. Castellucci has become a stylist in white haze, his productions as distinctive now as Robert Wilson's geometric minimalism in blue, and just as visually arresting in their conception, design and execution. This looks simply stunning and impressively choreographed.

It has to be said however, that it's more of an "interesting" production than a great one. Despite the efforts to bring "real people" onto the stage (see Castellucci's rather more successful Die Zauberföte again) and the impressive efforts to pull it all together into a coherent whole, it doesn't always succeed in finding the human warm within the work where it traditionally should. The idea of making Don Giovanni and Leporello look almost identical is another fine idea that makes the identity confusion more realistic, but it also loses something when the two baritones are practically indistinguishable.

Perhaps just as much at fault as the production, the singing didn't quite measure up or compensate for the lack of human warmth in the production. The singing is generally fine, and of a very high standard, as you would expect, but despite good performances from Davide Luciano as Don Giovanni (stripped fully naked at the finale) and Vito Priante as Leporello, and with perhaps the sole exception of a mighty performance from Nadezhda Pavlova as Donna Anna, the production never allowed you to engage with any of the characters of at least sympathise with their dilemma. Overall, this feels like an admirable production with good ideas and visuals, that despite its controversial trappings, plays out nonetheless in a rather run of the mill fashion.

Links: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert

Mozart - Così fan tutte (Salzburg, 2020)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così Fan Tutte

Salzburger Festspiele, 2020

Joana Mallwitz, Christof Loy, Elsa Dreisig, Marianne Crebassa, André Schuen, Bogdan Volkov, Lea Desandre, Johannes Martin Kränzle

ARTE Concert - 2 August 2020

It was going to have to be different if the Salzburg Festival was going to go ahead in any form this year, but despite a reduced programme and reduced audience on account of the Covid-19 restrictions and despite a characteristically minimalist stage set for a Christof Loy production, there's nothing in the least socially distant or socially distancing about this reworked version of Mozart's Così fan tutte. In fact the 2020 Salzburg production is a very physical, tightly choreographed, condensed in its cuts and in the precision in which it gets to the heart of Mozart's extraordinary and oft misunderstood opera.

It's appropriate in this case for Così fan tutte and exactly how you want it to be, because despite all its buffo comedy elements, Da Ponte's ludicrous plotting and the libretto's seemingly superficial and clichéd characterisation, the opera is actually deeply insightful in its observations about human nature, about love, relationships, men and women, about holding illusions and facing up to reality. Far from being a light comedy, the libretto is beautifully poetic, the music deeply moving and extraordinarily expressive of a wide range of human emotions and experiences that come from heart and the head. Or it can be if it's allowed to be.

Loy's minimalist 'generic' productions tend to work well with such works, where you don't need to be distracted by the mechanics of the plot, the period or the location, and can focus on the characters and the relationships between them. It may seem obvious but that can be done physically and spacially, the distance or closeness between them the characters measured out in their proximity to one another on the stage, whether they look at each other or not, whether they touch or hold. Fiordiligi and Dorabella here are clearly close friends, comfortably tactile in each other's company. The boys Guglielmo and Ferrando are tactile in a little more rough and tumble way, playfully jostling their master, Don Alfonso, showing more eagerness to impress than feel any real feeling for their girlfriends.

Loy, who in my experience usually works with as full an uncut version of an opera as possible, takes the opportunity of working with conductor Joana Mallwitz not just to compress the opera down for health and safety reasons (reducing the time spent in the hall for the audience, with no interval where they can mingle and spread any virus contagion), but to cut back on the more buffo elements, the dialogues that might be more offensive and sexist to a modern audience. That doesn't have to be the case - Christophe Honoré managed to integrate those potentially objectionable views into a rather more questioning view of Così fan tutte and humanity in his 2016 Aix-en-Provence production - and it does occasionally make the opera feel a little too rushed here, losing a nonetheless important element while not really making the plot or motivations feel any more credible or realistic.

Arguably, the plot was never meant to withstand the scrutiny of realism, but the human emotions and experiences in this remarkable work are nonetheless timelessly truthful and insightful. Christof Loy and Joana Mallwitz necessarily put aside some of the more comic interludes and sacrificing this aspect of the human experience, and instead look for those moments of beauty that is brought out by what is patently and intentionally a fake situation. It's faked or contrived by its creators however precisely to evoke specific emotions in order to understand what is important. It's not hard either to see where those moments of truth and beauty are; you need to look no further than the exquisite arias, more beautiful here than any in the far more famous arias of Don Giovanni, and at least on a par with the finer moments of that other Mozart/Da Ponte masterpiece that is Le Nozze di Figaro.

The compression employed here that requires some measure of suspending disbelief actually heightens the necessity of their being a willingness to believe on the part of both sets of lovers. And what Mozart and Da Ponte achieve is indeed a school for lovers, an education on its joys, anxieties and insecurities, its feelings of deep spiritual awakening and devastating fears of betrayal. It's a bit of a crash course, achieved by sleight of hand over an intense period of a day, where you are never really sure how aware the characters are of the game they are playing or at what point reality takes over and it stops being a game.

Seen that way, the opera is actually employs a post-modernist meta-behavioural effect far ahead of its time, one similar to that achieved by the late filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in Certified Copy (2010). I don't use this example randomly, since Kiarostami directed Così fan tutte in a production at Aix-en-Provence in 2008 (that I saw subsequently at the Coliseum in 2009), which makes me wonder whether, subconsciously or otherwise, he picked up the idea from Mozart and Da Ponte and expanded on it. You can't think of Così as naturalistic - it's ridiculous and silly, and yet everything about it is beautiful, achingly beautiful and right. It's completely authentic and makes perfect sense on a deep emotional and human level, on "how quickly a heart can change".

It's been a tough year for the arts, but there's a reminder here that we can't afford to lose or fail to nurture the kind of talent that is evident on the stages of Salzburg and mirrored on stages across the world. Like the Salzburg Elektra, the talent here is world class, as good as any classic historical performance of these works, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Marianne Crebassa in particular is just outstanding here as Dorabella. Elsa Dreisig brings that dreamy sincere youthful idealism to Flordiligi and there is plenty of youthful enthusiasm in the performances of André Schuen and Bogdan Volkov. Lea Desandre is a bright and entertaining Despina and Johannes Martin Kränzle an ideal Don Alfonso, charmingly mischievous with just a hint of a sinister motive. Much of the secret of making these characters work and come alive is just sheer nerve and enthusiasm, putting cynicism aside and being willing to believe that we can aspire to be better. That's half the battle with the opera as much as in the matters of love it deals with.

August 2020 may have meant a reduced opera programme for Salzburg, with only Elektra and Così fan tutte staged, but the choice of works and their presentation - both premiere performances broadcast live-streaming - showcase everything that is brilliant about opera, about why it is important and why we must find a way to keep it and other performing arts alive through the current crisis. There's a lot we can learn from the arts about dealing with the current times, a lot that Strauss, von Hofmannsthal, Mozart and Da Ponte have to show us. Elektra shows one response to the world, of individuals put through extreme and challenging experiences, mental illness, enforced separation, Così another very different but challenging experience. Both however show that we're only human and capable of making mistakes, but the consequences of not learning from them are too terrible to imagine.

Links: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert

Strauss - Elektra (Salzburg, 2020)

Richard Strauss - Elektra

Salzburger Festspiele, 2020

Franz Welser-Möst, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Aušrinė Stundytė, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, Asmik Grigorian, Derek Welton, Michael Laurenz, Tilmann Rönnebeck, Matthäus Schmidlechner, Sonja Sarić, Bonita Hyman, Katie Coventry, Deniz Uzun, Sinead Campbell-Wallace, Natalia Tanasii, Valeriia Savinskaia, Verity Wingate

ARTE Concert - 1 August 2020

Back in 2013, Krzysztof Warlikowski set the Munich production of Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten in an asylum. That's not a particularly original way to deal with such a wonderfully colourful and rich fairy-tale, but it remained largely effective through the power of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's extraordinary vision, with its psychoanalytical undercurrents that Warlikowski was careful not to dilute with too many distractions or modernisms. If there's ever a Strauss opera that deserves to be set in a mental institution though it's Elektra, where the mental disintegration of its lead figure as scored by Strauss is even more extreme than that of the preceding Salome (also recently reworked by this director). Warlikowski doesn't explicitly set this 2020 Salzburg production of Elektra in an asylum, but for all the aberrant behaviour on display in the House of Atreus, it might as well be.

As is often the case it's difficult and usually not particularly instructive to deconstruct Warlikowski's intentions or examine too closely how they align with the themes of the work in question, particularly when he goes overboard in cinematic references such as in the recent production of The Tales of Hoffmann. Some of the director's familiar mannerisms are there in the Salzburg Elektra, but mainly evident only in the set design of his partner and regular collaborator Małgorzata Szczęśniak. They take full measure and width of the Felsenreitschule venue in Salzburg to create a huge (socially distanced) space for the work, much wider than the usual claustrophobic set usually reserved for this intense work. If there's a method to this, it can only be to rise to the scale of the orchestration itself, and in terms of that and Franz Welser-Möst's conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic, it certainly gives full expression to the opera's immense forces.

One side of the stage does indeed have the look of a rundown asylum, with a long narrow communal bath and row of showers with rust stained steel walls on Elektra's side of the House. The water from the shallow pool causes flickering reflections that highlight and suggest the constant uncontrolled agitation of Elekra's mind over the murder of her father Agamemnon and her desire for vengeance upon her mother Clytemnestra. The other side of the stage holds a glass panelled interior room of the palace where Clytemnestra and her maids are bathed in blood red lighting, Warlikowski using video cameras to project what goes on inside. In its totality the set effectively creates an environment that simultaneously reflects the internalised emotions barely controlled by external appearances.

Other than that Warlikowski sticks fairly closely to the ample expression that is already there in the music with few of the distractions or diversions that you usually find with this director. There is an autopsy, a few stray figures who wander dazed onto the stage, some dummies of children, but there are no dancer interludes and no short film introduction, although the scene is set with a recital of backgrounding text before the opera starts. With the spirit of Agamemnon made present, it's clear then that the director wants to bring motivation and characterisation to the fore and, aligned with the score, it's impossible not to feel Elektra's pain on a deep and visceral level which, without taking away from the quality of the poetry and the psychological depths explored, is surely where opera is most successful and notable.

Crucially, you can't really achieve that level of dramatic intensity without an Elekra to match it and, well, there was little doubt that on her recent performances of growing power and intensity, Aušrinė Stundytė would be capable of measuring up to it. It's an outstanding performance, the Lithuanian soprano as ever almost completely immersed in character (to be completely immersed would surely be next to madness). But a damaged Elektra can't work in isolation. Warlikowski takes care not to present Clytemnestra as a domineering caricature and sung by Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, we see a more troubled and not unsympathetic figure who has been a victim of circumstances, but still very dangerous. Asmik Grigorian also permits you to have some sympathy for the usually wet Chrysothemis, the force of her delivery undoubtedly contributing to the success of that characterisation.

Make no mistake however, violence, madness and death are the inevitable outcome, deliriously unravelled in Strauss's extraordinary score and put into words in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's very distinctive and poetically rich spin on Sophocles' version of the Greek tragedy. For all the beauty of the language, it distills the essence of the drama down into the big questions and conflicts of life and death, hatred and love, family bonds and debts of honour, irreconcilable extremes that descend into madness and death. Krzysztof Warlikowski effectively visualises that violent climax with large scale projections of splattered blood and masses of flies. Whether you follow it or just feel it, the Salzburg production as a whole certainly succeeds in doing justice to one of the greatest opera works of the 20th century, still capable of leaving you almost breathless and in shock.

Links: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert

Verdi - Simon Boccanegra (Salzburg, 2019)

Giuseppe Verdi - Simon Boccanegra

Salzburg Festival, 2019

Valery Gergiev, Andreas Kriegenburg, Luca Salsi, Marina Rebeka, René Pape, Charles Castronovo, André Heyboer, Antonio Di Matteo, Long Long

Unitel Edition - Blu-ray

Whatever the plotting and structural weaknesses of early and mid-period Verdi operas, you have to admire the composer's ability to put every ounce of musical conviction behind them, and none more so than the likes of Don Carlos and Simon Boccanegra. If you can find a conductor willing to push it but not sacrifice character detail for bombast, if you can get a director willing to approach the work on the basis of its deeper underlying themes, and you can get singers of equal conviction and technical ability to deliver it with passion and meaning, then those works can approach true greatness. Getting all those elements lined up however is no small task.

The most obvious area of Simon Boccanegra that needs particular attention - and where it is lacking in this Salzburg production - is the plot. To put it mildly, it's difficult to follow and has issues with credibility, contrivance and coincidence. It doesn't have a particular large cast of principals, but the connections between them have conflicts of duty, position and romantic complications, all of which in a lesser production can tend to obscure or distract from the chief underlying theme of the opera, which was clearly the subject that was most significant for Verdi; the bonds between a father and his daughter.

Falling somewhere between Rigoletto and Don Carlo - and not just chronologically - Simon Boccanegra has a central father/daughter relationship that is threatened by personal vanity and ambition in the former work and the heavyweight political concerns intruding on personal freedom and happiness in the latter, not to mention a tone that is consistently gloomy and pessimistic. It never manages to reconcile these two sides despite Arrigo Boito and Verdi's 1881 revisions to the original 1857 version, but with a creative director who can recognise the qualities of the music and bring strong dramaturgy to a production it is possible to make Simon Boccanegra work.

Calixto Bieito's revelatory Paris production is a rare case where the true genius of the work is brought out, the director recognising that what is missing - on the surface at least, it's not missing in Verdi's music - is the presence of the spirit of Maria. Amelia's mother is very much the connecting tissue, the emotional charge that drives Boccanegra's gloomy despair and Fiesco's desire for revenge, the common factor that links the otherwise disconnected scenes separated by time or off-stage developments.

Unfortunately Andreas Kriegenburg, whose productions have consistently failed to really connect with the works in question as far as my experience goes with this director (Not so keen on his Les Hugenots, Die Walküre or The Snow Queen, although I liked his Wozzeck rather more), doesn't have anything similar to offer that might make the plotting and characterisation credible, much less illuminate the deeper undercurrents that Bieito so successfully explored. Aside from functionality the best thing you can say about the pretty vacant set design (again by Harald B. Thor) is that it fills the huge stage of the Festspielehaus impressively. At a stretch it raises the human struggles to an epic scale, or conversely, it shows that all the family feuding is ultimately pointless in the grander scheme of things.

I'm not sure however that this mixed message is particularly meaningful in the context of Simon Boccanegra. At the very least the director should be attempting to make the plot easier to follow and alert the spectator to the nature of the family tragedy that is about to unfold. Andreas Kriegenburg has nothing to bring to the work other than a stylish modern setting with figures carrying tablets and texting messages on mobile phones, and there's a little bit of theatrical mannerism in recognition of the fact that the operatic drama is itself stylised rather than naturalistic. It neither draws however from the melancholic soul of the work nor succeed in making it feel contemporary and relevant.

It's unfortunate because in other respects the Salzburg production is impressive. Valery Gergiev is often criticised for lack of rehearsal but there's no faulting the measured control of the Wiener Philharmoniker here, harnessing all the power of the work, pinpointing the key scenes, particularly the Council Chamber scene at the close of Act I and the highly charged Act II trio confrontation between Adorno, Boccanegra and Amelia. That probably has as much to do with an almost flawless cast that includes an incandescent Marina Rebeka as Amelia, a heartfelt Charles Castronovo as Adorno and an always reliable René Pape as Fiesco. Luca Salsi's Boccanegra is warmly and capably sung, but perhaps due to a failing of the direction, it doesn't carry the necessary dramatic or melancholic weight here.

The musical performance and singing performances are so strong and well-presented in HD on the Unitel Edition Blu-ray that this is certainly worth a look. If Kriegenburg doesn't really help the plot work, Verdi's remarkable score almost convinces in its own right with performances like this and a strong audio/visual presentation. There are no extra features related to the production on the disc, but the booklet contains a brief overview of the problems Verdi had with the work and some commentary on the Salzburg production.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele

Mozart - Idomeneo (Salzburg, 2019)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Idomeneo

Salzburger Festspiele, 2019

Teodor Currentzis, Peter Sellars, Russell Thomas, Paula Murrihy, Ying Fang, Nicole Chevalier, Levy Sekgapane, Issachah Savage, Jonathan Lemalu

Medici streaming - 12 August 2019

After their take on La Clemenza di Tito in the same venue in 2017, there would have been little doubt that the 2019 Salzburg Festival production of Idomeneo would be controversial; the only question being whether it would be Peter Sellars or Teodor Currentzis who would be most wayward in their in interpretation of one of Mozart's most interesting operas. Well, it's a close run thing.

Mozart's operas are so rich in music and multifaceted in their content and themes that they are eminently amenable to deeper exploration, reinterpretation and modern revision; nothing about them has dated. As an early opera seria however, with a baroque libretto written for André Campra, Idomeneo does certainly still have one foot in a bygone age, yet it is already progressive in terms of Mozart's reworking, reinvention and humanistic outlook. Filtered through the young Mozart's sensibility and remarkable talent, all those conventional laments, jealousies, cruel twists of fate and extreme human sentiments feel vivid, alive and real.

It's so powerful an advance on the mannerisms of the past that it demands an equally imaginative, modern and humanistic interpretation in stage performance. Perhaps not everyone wants it to go as far as Dieter Dorn’s at the Munich Bayerische Staatoper or Damiano Michieletto in Vienna, or indeed as Sellas and Currentzis not unexpectedly take it here, but it's hard to argue that they don't bring a sincere response to the musical and dramatic content of Idomeneo, striving to find a way to highlight the richness of its themes and development of its characters.

Initially however, you are definitely thrown a little off-balance by the oddness of the set developed for the very specific demands of the Salzburg Felsenreitschule. Not a single object on the stage is related to the actual Crete settings of the opera, nor are they naturalistic or in most cases even identifiable. The stage on the floor of the Riding School theatre has clear plastic tubes that rise up as columns with coloured lights, the stage littered elsewhere with misshapen plastic containers, tubes and inflatable blob like creatures - perhaps a different kind of monster that is disgorged by the sea in this age of environmental disaster. The costumes of the Greeks and their Trojan prisoners is militaristic, but the coloured camouflage outfits look more like pyjamas.

As unusual as the set looks, the unfamiliar sound, pacing and rhythms that Teodor Currentzis brings out in the period instrument interpretation of the opera with the Freiburger Barockorchester can be even more unsettling as it sounds very different here from any recording you might be more familiar with. The intention is clearly to push the range of expression that Mozart employs for this opera, marking it out as very different from the baroque works that precede it, exploiting and emphasising the dynamic that Mozart employs for this unique and brilliant work.

At times you get the impression that the intention is also to do everything possible to break away from Mozart as comfortable and easy-listening, perhaps over-emphasising and deliberately pushing against the familiar. It's slow when you expect it to be faster, fast when you expect it to be slower, aggressive when you would expect merely forceful, but it never seems to work against the intent of the work. It hints rather that all might not be as it appears on the surface of the moral, political and romantic dilemmas of each of the characters whose lives have been thrown into turmoil under the curse of Neptune; absolutes and certainties - being saved from the dead, feeling secure in love, family loyalties - are all indeed turned on their head.

What Currentzis and Sellars do however is force you to reconsider the work in new terms, not rest on the certainty of familiarity, but be challenged afresh by every scene, every aria and recitative, every single note, trying to hear what is really being expressed in the melody, the tempo and the instrumentation - the fortepiano notably playing a larger role here than in any version of this work I've heard before.

If you can put up with Peter Sellars's more annoying mannerisms - the choreographic ritualised steps and semaphore arm signals (which are at least better than park and bark performances) - his direction of the internal nature and conflict of the characters is interesting. It's almost what you would expect to find in The Magic Flute: characters out of balance, seeking to find an emotional equilibrium as well as find an accord with the forces of nature and their place in the world, seeking wisdom, seeking answers, seeking peace and willing to endure suffering and trials for it. It does show that Idomeneo is practically a prototype for Die Zauberflöte (With Electra a furious Queen of the Night and Neptune a lesson-giving Sarastro), and in that respect the treatment is thoroughly Mozartian.

Not that some sections of the Salzburg would notice. When it comes down to who upsets them most, the director traditionally gets it in the neck and Currentzis's eccentricities and indulgences are overlooked. In truth, neither are entirely successful and it comes across as a little over-laboured, over-intellectualised, existing in some theatrical vacuum that doesn't entirely connect with Mozart's Idomeneo on a relatable and instinctive human level. It's a fascinating account nonetheless of a magnificent, deeply beautiful work, one that is emphasised by some fine committed singing performances, notably from a sweetly lyrical Ying Fang as Ilya and a fiery Nicole Chevalier as Elektra (almost stealing the show at the finale), but all of the performances impress, including Paula Murrihy as an intensely sincere Idamante and Russell Thomas as a warm and troubled Idomeneo.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele