Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Vienna, 2015)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer

Theater an der Wien, 2015

Marc Minkowski, Olivier Py, Samuel Youn, Ingela Brimberg, Lars Woldt, Bernard Richter, Manuel Günther, Ann-Beth Solvang

Naxos - Blu-ray

The enduring legacy of Wagner's operas, even as musical fashions and tastes have long moved on, has much to do with his sense of theatre. It's this underrated aspect of the composer's work that can first be seen developing into something greater in Der fliegende Holländer, the composer aligning a sense of theatricality to a subject of mythological drama in a way that would inspire his own distinctive musical ideas and themes. If the language and subject of Der fliegende Holländer is perhaps not convincing on its own terms to a modern audience and its message is by no means a profound or nuanced one, its dramatic and musical-drama strengths are such that the work can still touch upon something deeper.

Olivier Py's opera productions have their problems and taking liberties with the intent of the work can be one of them, but as an actor himself and theatre director (as well as currently being the artistic director and programmer of the prestigious Avignon drama festival) there is no question that Py has a strong sense of theatre. As a director has also developed his own theatrical language and signature in the opera house over recent years, most inspired when dealing with questions of good and evil, light and dark, sacrifice and redemption. His productions have consequently been more successful when applied to works like Hamlet, Dialogues des Carmélites and Ariane et Barbe-bleu, and less so when trying to shoehorn them into something like Aida.

Der fliegende Holländer clearly fits in very well with this vision, but just in case you are in any doubt, Senta walks across the stage early during the overture of this Theater an der Wien production and writes 'Erlösung' (Redemption) on the black boards of the set's representation of the Dutchman's ship. Pierre-André Weitz's dark and imposing set design is familiar from the tone that Py has established in those aforementioned works with similar themes. The black panels not only represent the Dutchman's ship, but also the walls of the house where Senta and Donald live. The rotating set however offers up many more possibilities and configurations, as well as symbolically marking a dividing line between interior worlds and the outside world.

There's a lot of interiority in Der fliegende Holländer and Py manages to represent it well in this production through the sets, but also with simple effective devices that don't stretch the indulgence of the audience. In Act I for example, Py handles the long monologues in archaic verse well by not having the performers stand alone on the stage singing to themselves. When the Steersman sings to his love from his lonely lookout, you actually see her silently walk up and embrace him. Likewise when the Dutchman laments the fate that condemns him to eternally sail the high seas, he sings it to a dancer as Satan who prowls dramatically alongside him on the stage. Py indulges in the theatricality a little by having the dancer cover his face and shoulders in black make-up on the stage during the overture, the dressing room mirror remaining there throughout.

In terms of visualising the force of evil that the captain struggles with it's highly effective and doesn't come to dominate the proceedings the way dancing stage doubles often do. Likewise while Py characteristically brings full-frontal nudity (male and female) into the production, it's to illustrate and bring out the underlying passions that exist in the work. A naked double for Senta lies stretched out on a bed and appears vulnerable while the Dutchman and her father, Duncan (as he is called in this version of the work) barter the terms of his stay at their house with the hand of his daughter thrown in for good measure. The stage and the characterisation elsewhere is filled with little details like that. It's partly updated to the 1940s - for no discernible reason I can see other than it looks very smart for the costume design - but the locations are more symbolic than literal.

Act II consequently abandons any idea of the wives being seamstresses spinning, Mary rather directing them in a choir practice, since what they are really doing is indeed singing. With Senta's recounting of the legend and her first meeting with the Dutchman, all of the elements seeded throughout come together, the stage rotating faster, drawing together their worlds; a much more expansive world than the small house in a boxed in space that Erik/Georg hopes to share with Senta. Symbolism however - a field of black crosses, a huge skull - indicates that the scope of Senta's life with the Dutchman is one determined by its fatalistic nature. She has effectively entered into a death pact.

Py's theatrical interpretation of Wagner's musical-drama is only part of the equation. The singing has a large role in determining whether these ideas (Wagner's and Py's) work on the stage. The principal roles in the Theatre an der Wien's 2015 production are all superb. Samuel Youn is a Bayreuth regular and his characterisation in performance just seems to deepen and gain greater authority. Ingela Brimberg impressively channels all the passion of Senta in a bright timbre with secure delivery. She initially seems more tormented than romantic, but her first scene with the Dutchman shows that she is capable of a softer touch that loses none of its force. Lars Woldt is a superb Donald and Bernard Richter a much more sympathetic and sweetly toned Georg/Erik than is usually the case. Even Manuel Günther's Steersman and Ann-Beth Solvang's Mary are impressive here.

As some of the perhaps confusing references indicate, conductor Marc Minkowski is working with the earliest version of Der fliegende Holländer with its original Scottish setting, with Daland named Duncan and Erik as Georg. This doesn't make any discernible difference as far as Py's non-Scottish specific setting is concerned, although the different ending is very significant for the purposes of the theme of Redemption here. This isn't the usual kind of opera that I would associate Marc Minkowski with either, but there's no question that you get the full impact of Wagner here, the music raging and stormy, moody and dark, lyrical and highly Romantic with all the temperament of a changeable sea.

Py and Minkowski's efforts here all play to the strengths of Der fliegende Holländer not against it, expanding on the characterisation perhaps, but only in a way that tries to get at an essential truth. Whether the Romanticism of the work means anything in an age when the currency of legends and mythology is much devalued, where love and sacrifice are less common, the truth and the beauty of Wagner's vision still comes through in its glorious theatricality.

Py makes a strong case for this vision in a fascinating and informed interview included in the booklet on the Naxos Blu-ray release. The HD transfer presents the darkness of Pierre-André Weitz's hugely impressive and technically accomplished set designs well, and both the DTS HD Master-Audio and LPCM Stereo high resolution soundtracks have detail and impact. The Blu-ray is all-region, BD50, with subtitles in German, English, French, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Theater an der Wien

Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Bayreuth 2013 - Blu-ray)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2013

Christian Thielemann, Jan Philipp Gloger, Franz-Josef Selig, Ricarda Merbeth, Tomislav Mužek, Christa Mayer, Benjamin Bruns, Samuel Youn

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

You never know quite what to expect from a new Bayreuth production other than the certainty that it won't be a "traditional" staging of a Wagner opera. Jan Philipp Gloger's concept for the 2012 production of Der Fliegende Holländer for example, is initially difficult to figure out, but there are a few things that stand in its favour that suggest that it at least holds true to the spirit and intention of the work. One is its adherence to the dramatic and mythological strengths of the work, the other is the quality of the performance itself, conducted by Christian Thielemann and sung well by a strong cast.

Taking it in terms of each of the three acts - although this performance uses the "joined-up" version of Der Fliegende Holländer without breaks or intermission - it's not immediately obvious what the setting or the intention is from the first act, and there's not much that appears consistent in the tone or the concept in the acts that follow either. Act I seems to suggest a futuristic setting, a data or information sea rather than a traditional water one. Dark walls are lined with connections, components and cables like a motherboard, lighting-up with the flashes of the storm, one that seems to derive directly from the ominous and unnoticed approach of the cyborg Dutchman's phantom ship.  

It may be dark and menacing, but the tone is inconsistent, the Steersman and Daland like a comedy double-act or at least showing some degree of levity in their actions and gestures. Conceptually, it doesn't seem to hold together, but arguably Wagner's technique doesn't hold together either in this earliest through-composed work which breaks into Donizetti melodies and Lortzing-influenced operetta duets. Act II seems similarly schizophrenic, the female chorus not a group of wives-a-weaving but workers in a factory packing fans into boxes. Among this group of sweetly singing industrious ladies, Senta comes across as a bit of an odd-ball - dark, gloomy and not a little deranged, crafting an abstract sculpture of the mythical Dutchman out of spare bits of wood, black tar and packing.

If you're a bit lost as to what is going on here you can at least enjoy the outstanding musical and singing performances, but things do start to fall into place in Act III (although it might help if you refer to the director's notes on the production in the accompanying booklet). Broadly speaking it's not that far removed from Martin Kušej's interpretation for the De Nederlandse in terms of how  the subject of Der Fliegende Holländer is viewed as a question of love versus commerce. The incompatibility and conflict between love and business is indeed a subject that plagued Wagner most of his life, so there's merit in this view, but whether it can be brought out meaningfully depends very much whether it also adheres to other important aspects of the composer's life and philosophy, particularly around this time.

According to Jan Philipp Gloger, the Dutchman's curse is to be ever in search of new markets and increasing his profits. Weary of the pace of modern life and cold practicality of business, he needs to find some peace and get back in touch with real human feelings. This is a credible reading of the work, but it needs to also take into consideration Wagner's belief in the romantic and ennobling power of myth, its importance enriching and expanding the horizons of the individual and its collective purpose as something that defines a nation and its people. Golger's production actually does this, converting Senta into a makeshift angel, her actions inspiring her co-workers to recognise her human sacrifice in a commemorative object d'art.

That sounds belittling of Wagner's mythology, but it actually brings it back to human terms without losing any of the grandeur of the work. That's all there in the music - to which careful and respectful attention is paid here - and in the singing performances. Christian Thielemann's conducting of the Bayreuth orchestra might perhaps be a little unadventurous, but it's perfectly attuned to the dramatic performance and the singing. Unshowy, it's sensitive to the intricacies of the score, muscular where required, light and lyrical in other places with a true romantic sweep and dramatic drive. It's wonderful to hear, but even more impressive in how it connects with all the points of the dramatic staging.

The efforts of director and conductor could still all fall apart if the production didn't also have sympathetic singing performances and, fortunately, the singing here is very strong in all the roles. Ricarda Merbeth in particular is outstanding as Senta. It's is a difficult role, not just for the singing requirements, but in how one chooses to define and balance Senta's dreamy, deranged and romantic nature. Merbeth not only meets all the technical requirements, she delivers it with ringing lyricism that captures the magical as well as the all too human nature of her character. She's at her best in the critical Act II scene with the Dutchman which has to make this unlikely couple seem credible and she and Samuel Youn do indeed 'click' and work together wonderfully.

You can't fault the casting in the other roles here either, with Franz-Josef Selig a solid Daland and Benjamin Bruns a bright, golden-voiced Steersman. The choral work - a vital element of Der Fliegende Holländer - is also outstanding, the male choruses purposeful and driven, the female chorus delicate and lyrical. The production design for this 2013 recording incidentally seems to have been reworked slightly from it 2012 presentation from what I can see from production photographs. Senta is dressed in black throughout here rather than red, the blood red imagery replaced elsewhere with black tar-like drips. The model sailing ship is gone in Senta's ballad, replaced with her obsessing over the abstract sculpture she has created.

On Blu-ray, the 2013 Bayreuther Festspiele production of Der Fliegende Holländer looks tremendous, even with all the dark backgrounds and high contrast lighting. The audio tracks are both strong, the DTS Master HD-Audio 5.1 giving a good surround ambience while the PCM track is more focussed and direct. Extras consist of short interviews with Benjamin Bruns, chorus master Eberhard Friedrich, director Jan Philipp Gloger and a slightly longer entertaining interview with Christian Thielemann being amiably(?) spiky and contrary, clearly knowing his own mind with respects to Wagner and this work. The disc is region-free, subtitles are in English, French, German and Korean.

Wagner - Lohengrin

Richard Wagner - Lohengrin

Bayreuth Festival 2011

Andris Nelsons, Hans Neuenfels, Reinhard von der Thannen, Georg Zeppenfeld, Klaus Florian Vogt, Annette Dasch, Jukka Rasilainen, Petra Lang, Samuel Youn, Stefan Heibach, Willem van der Heyden, Rainer Zaun, Christian Tschelebiew

Opus Arte

It’s refreshing to see Wagner approached with a critical eye, one that doesn’t just accept his work with a deferential, respectful attitude, played straight and full of grandiose pomposity, but rather strives to find the deeper qualities in his work and consider how - or even whether - they still have meaning and relevance to the world of opera and to the world in general. It’s also refreshing - surprising for some, shocking for others - that it’s at Bayreuth, the home of Wagner and under the directorship of the composer’s great-daughter Katarina Wagner, that some of the most radical and irreverent productions are being undertaken. Hans Neuenfels’ 2010 production of Lohengrin, recorded here at the Festival in 2011, is consequently another radical reworking of Wagner’s own mythology that has generated some amount of controversy and bewilderment, and it’s not hard to see why.

Lohengrin has always been one of the most difficult Wagner operas to approach, partly because of where it stands in the development of the composer finding his own voice and partly because of the history that has become attached to it through its association with Nazism. Even though the work is often grouped as one of the three earlier operas (along with Der Fliegende Höllander and Tannhäuser) that saw Wagner still finding his way towards the reformation of opera into a music-drama artform that would exalt and give expression to essential German characteristics as expressed in ancient myths and legends, it is nonetheless the most clear and consistently ‘Wagnerian’ of those earlier works. If there is any fault with the work, it’s not so much musical as the fact that it tends to put across those ideals of German purity across in a way that allowed them to be treated simplistically and seized upon in later years as an expression of Aryan supremacy. With its bold choruses of Germanic voices chanting 'Sieg Heil', the subsequent history of the work beyond the composer’s lifetime can’t be ignored, and it means that a director needs to be very careful about how such scenes are staged.

Hans Neuenfels’ idea then isn’t in itself necessarily a bad one. He correctly sees that there is much more to Lohengrin than solemn declarations of Germanic might and purity, but that there is an essential element of humanity and romanticism in the work. And not only does it subject those noble characteristics to examination, but there is a wider consideration and a deep understanding in Lohengrin of the flaws and weaknesses in the German character also, as well as a sense of humour that is often ignored in Wagner. In some respects then for Neuenfels, Lohengrin represents a kind of social experiment for Wagner, where he pits conflicting German characteristics against each other - often in very broad terms of good and evil - and explores the impact they have on society, here in its setting of Brabant. Little did Wagner realise how those German characteristics would later find expression in Nazism, or how much the work itself would play a part in the formation of those ideals, but perhaps Lohengrin’s social experiment does indeed prophetically shed a light on just how German society can give rise to those kind of sentiments.

The difficulty with Neuenfels’ direction of Lohengrin for Bayreuth however is in how he and production designer Reinhard von der Thannen take the idea of the opera as a social experiment through a reductio ad absurdum where Brabant literally becomes a laboratory and its citizens run around for the most part dressed in black, white and pink mouse costumes. It all looks very silly indeed and definitely not how you expect to see Wagner traditionally produced. But then again it’s clearly the intention of the director to totally break down those preconceptions and the historical baggage that comes with the opera, and at the very least you can safely say that there has never been a Lohengrin like this one. The staging is colourful and well-choreographed, while the modernist, clean-line, brightly lit stage that is now a distinctive feature of Bayreuth in recent years is far from the dark theatricality that you normally associate with opera productions. Using animated sequences moreover, the production takes a Rashomon-like perspective on the nature of Truth (Wahrheit) in relation to the alleged drowning of Gottfried, the heir to the throne of Brabant, by his sister Elsa, and highlights the changing reaction of the people (the rats), to the unfolding of these events. Along with the people’s reaction to the call to arms by King Heinrich “The Fowler” to fight against Hungary that comes at the same time, this is definitely an interesting angle to explore.

As a theme then, the production certainly has validity and relevance to Wagner’s work, remaining relatively faithful to its narrative progression despite the often absurd imagery that is used, and it is at least fascinating to watch and highly original. Rather than bringing out any underlying complexity in the work however, it seems to either just exaggerate the broad black-and-white characterisation in the most simplistic terms with blatant symbolism (swans on one side, rats on the other) and obvious colour-coding, or else smother it in obscure references and imagery when the fit isn’t quite perfect. It hardly deals with the more problematic questions raised by the work and its historical legacy, and despite the attempt to draw out the type of humour from the work that you might find more readily in Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg, it doesn’t seem to work particularly well with the musical language employed by Wagner either. It’s more of a “commentary” on Lohengrin than a vision that makes a true meaningful connection with the work. Whether this failing to fully connect with the heart of the piece is a problem for the performers or not is hard to say, but although it’s wonderfully played by the orchestra, Andris Nelsons at least seems to struggle to find a tone to match the uneven and bizarre antics on the stage.

The singing too - something unfortunately not always given due consideration at Bayreuth - is again not really strong enough here to make the idea work, although some singers manage better than others. Klaus Florian Vogt is simply made to play Lohengrin, singing it here - as he does in the Kent Nagano/Nikolaus Lehnhoff production already available on Blu-ray - with a beautiful lyrical purity of tone that seems wonderfully fitted to his character. His voice could hardly be more of a contrast to that of Jonas Kaufmann who sang the role in this production last year. Georg Zeppenfeld is also very impressive as King Henry, singing wonderfully with authority but also with an edge of character instability that works well with the concept here. Petra Lang alone gives the kind of powerful, commanding Wagnerian performance you would expect. She is absolutely stunning on those high passages - although not always as strong across the range - and she consequently cuts an appropriately fearsome figure as Ortrud. She seems to adapt better to the ‘baddie’ role than Jukka Rasilainen, who looks and sounds hopelessly out of place here as Telramund. Annette Dasch too clearly finds the singing and the interpretation something of a struggle - but Elsa is by no means an easy role and there are enough good points to admire in her performance here. The chorus work - notwithstanding its members having to wear rat costumes - is simply outstanding.

On Blu-ray in High Definition, the brightly lit and colourful stage looks most impressive, the cameras finding plenty of low and high angles to capture the whole scope of the stage direction without getting too carried away. The audio tracks, in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 are exceptionally good, with the orchestra and singing well recorded and mixed. Instead of the usual bland Bayreuth Making Of feature, the extras principally consist of four five minute interviews with Katarina Wagner, Hans Neuenfels, Klaus Florian Vogt and Annette Dasch, but also include a Cast Gallery and the three animated Wahrheit sequences. The booklet contains an essay with further information and interpretation of the ideas in the production, and a full synopsis.