Einem - Der Prozess (Vienna, 2024)

Gottfried von Einem - Der Prozess

Theater an der Wien, Kammeroper Wien, 2024

Walter Kobéra, Stefan Herheim, Robert Murray, Anne-Fleur Werner, Alexander Grassauer, Timothy Connor, Leo Mignonneau, Valentino Blasina, Lukas Karzel, Philipp Schöllhorn, Fabian Tobias Huster

OperaVision - 12th December 2024

Kafka’s The Trial has remained not just a prescient work that looks like a nightmare that is increasingly becoming a reality, but it's also a book that has always been extraordinarily observant of human behaviour and its relationship to laws, regulations and conformity. Looked at dispassionately, the everyday rules and modes of behaviour that we accept as normal are anything but, and are in fact often contrary to human nature, controlling and restrictive. It's hard to look at that dispassionately however and at least as far as Kafka’s worldview of the arrest of Josef K. is concerned in The Trial, it can be seen rather as either completely absurd or quietly but deeply threatening. Or, since Kafka cannot be reduced to such simple analysis, it can be all of the above and quite a bit more besides.

Particularly when it comes to how a director like Stefan Herheim chooses to represent Kafka when faced with Gottfried von Einem’s 1953 opera version of Der Prozess. One thing Kafka's work is, for all the truth of its observations, is non-naturalistic. It, or indeed its lead figure Josef K., embraces the absurdity of the situation and takes it to extremes. Whether it's Josef K. who is guilty for whatever it is he has or hasn't done, whether it's the 'system' that is absurdly complicated by obscure, unnecessarily complex and sometimes contradictory rules, it's all part of the equation or unspoken contract that the citizen enters into in a kind of dance down a path that leaves no room for rational thought or individual discretion.

Herheim, in his usual metatheatrical way, take in the opera itself as means of showing the characters entering into a tightly choreographed predetermined progress through the drama. Set in Salzburg, presumably as the composer was Austrian, Josef K. - looking remarkably like the older white bearded and shock haired Gottfried von Einem - awakes to read in a book (presumably The Trial) and wonders why his normal routine has been disturbed, expecting - so the book says - that he expects to have his breakfast brought to him. This comes to the amusement of those, looking like younger replicas of himself, who have come to arrest him.

The indication - if you didn't know to expect this of director Stefan Herheim - is that we are in the mind of Gottfried von Einem as he considers how to put Der Prozess to music, and as he plays the role of the reluctant arrested man he even holds out a sheet of music as his identification papers. The main official who has advised him of his rights (or lack of them) is a bewigged conductor of the orchestra who are all outside his room, ready to lead him on merry dance through the proceedings.

It seems like absurdity is the direction that Herheim has chosen to present the situation of Josef K.'s trial, but there is a close attention to detail here, every bit of it striving to get to the heart of this curious situation - and curious opera evidently - and find out what it really says about the contract the individual believes they have entered into with society's expectations, laws and conventions. Josef K. is certain that he has committed no wrong, and since he lives in a civilised nation at peace where the rule of law holds sway, he will surely be believed and trusted by the state. They will surely see that there has been a mistake and he will be afforded treatment in accord with his human rights. And yet, he begins to doubt himself. If the state thinks he has done something wrong, well, surely it can't be for no reason?

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to recognise this as the dilemma of many who have fallen foul of the state, of the authorities, of petty rule-enforcers. And, as is becoming increasingly evident, it's not just something that happens in nations under an impressive authoritarian rule (as we once perhaps naively thought, placing our trust in the rule of law), but that it seems to be the nature of the state (political leaders, parties) to seek to undermine, remove and destroy individual thought and dissent that might lead to their removal from power. It's a universal condition and one perhaps that needs to be recognised with the growing presence of generative AI that will eventually make many decisions for us in the future (sorry, I know it seems obligatory to shoehorn mention of AI into every review now).

Add to that some psychosexual impulses and religious guilt that pervade Josef K. or Kafka, a critique of bureaucracy as an end in itself, some self-hatred, insecurities and even a literal scene of self- flagellation and there is a lot to unpack here, without even getting into Herheim's metafictional and psychoanalytical treatment of it all. That element is even there in the original, in Josef K.'s dissatisfaction with how poorly the proceedings are being carried out and his belief that he could make a better job of his arrest and trial himself. That results here in the Einem figure turning into the lawyer half-way through. Well, he has been almost everyone else here, and since it operates with a kind of dream logic bordering on nightmare there are challenges in trying to tie The Trial down to any one simple rational reading, so better just embrace the absurdity of it all.

Of course that's just the kind of thing Stefan Herheim thrives on, bringing the creator and the creation into the mix as well as probing the undercurrents in the work and the creation. He has done so notably with Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades for the Dutch National Opera) and with Wagner (Parsifal, Der Ring des Nibelungen), and successfully so, somehow grasping all the complexity and layers and yet making it readable and accessible (except to those expecting a conventional playing out of the original plot). He has plenty to work with in Einem's Der Prozess. It's a heck of a challenge, but typically Herheim manages to be faithful to the intent of the original, capturing the absurdity, the comedy, the psychological underpinning of fears and self-doubt, while turning the work inside out and offering his own unique visual style and interpretation with a reflection on the artistic act of musical creativity.

Composed in 1953, very much in the free all-embracing style of the contemporary music of the period, Eimens' music is wonderfully expressive and dynamic, performed here by the small but loud Klangforum Wien orchestra at the back of the An der Wien Kammeroper stage. The music jumps between short sections that capture the fast moving changes of the action and tone of the drama, with rhythmic pulses, marching arrangements, pumping brass and melodic woodwind playing and even hints of jazz. There is even a parody or reference to Puccini's Tosca for some unfathomable reason at one point (there is much in this work, in the music and the direction that is unfathomable). It reminds me of Prokofiev's playful approach to the developing absurdity of The Love of Three Oranges, and it works wonderfully for this work. Even those bits of Kafka that drag and frustrate the longer it goes on are mirrored here. 

It's debatable whether Herheim has anything to add to The Trial, but he certainly brings out certain elements well and gives much to think about. It's Einem however who pulls out all the stops in a musically rich and fascinating response to the work. Which means the orchestra compete to hold the attention with than the drama, and the superb musical direction of Walter Kobéra and the performance of the Klangforum Wien PPCM Academy of an arrangement of the score for chamber orchestra never ceases to impress. Combined with the busy activity on the small stage with a relatively large cast and Herheim adding additional figures, nothing is easy about this work, but the production design is marvellous at keeping it all together.

Although the production involves professional and students, everything about it is first-rate. In fact, it's the youthful element of the student singers that bring such an energy to the proceedings, working alongside and pushed by more experienced singers and musicians. Josef K. however would be a challenge for any singer, particularly faced with the layers and complexity that Herheim adds to the role, hence it has an experienced performer like Robert Murray taking the part. Anne-Fleur Werner has similar challenges having to play all the female singing roles (or single female in multiple Kafkaesque incarnations), many of them sexual situations, and she is excellent. But the rest of the cast similarly all have multiple roles and performance challenges and all are exceptionally good here. Ironically, for a work of literature that has the reputation of being intense and intimidating, Herheim and the cast - choosing not to execute Josef K. in this production - show that there is actually something liberating in the way Kafka's work opens up a new way of breaking the unspoken agreements and formal conventions between the individual and the state, and there is a similar sense of liberation in Einem's musical approach that is captured beautifully in the nature of this production.

External links: Theater an der Wien, OperaVision

Handel - Xerxes (Duisburg, 2019)

George Frideric Handel - Xerxes

Deutsche Oper am Rhein, 2019

Konrad Junghänel, Stefan Herheim, Valer Sabadus, Terry Wey, Katarina Bradic, Torben Jürgens, Heidi Elisabeth Meier, Anke Krabbe, Hagen Matzeit

OperaVision - January 2019

What is impressive about many of Stefan Herheim's productions is his ability to get deep underneath the driving forces of the works in question, whether it's by transporting the work into a modern context and completely deconstructing it (La Bohème, Rusalka), setting it in the wider context of the time and history surrounding its creation (Eugene Onegin), or even using the creator of the work and its creation to illuminate and provide another way of looking at the works (Parsifal, The Queen of Spades). Ironic distancing has to be maintained however with a respect for the fundamental concerns of the work and sometimes you get the impression on rare occasions that either Herheim's approach is completely ironical or he just doesn't have anything particularly deep or meaningful to say about the work.

Keeping opera seria entertaining and relevant to a modern audience while respecting the musical conventions and intentions of the work is a challenge for any director, and Handel's Xerxes/Serse is not the most dramatic or involving of treatments on a subject that has been covered many times in baroque opera. Sometimes however all you need is a single idea or context to set the work within, and Herheim's idea is a simple one that comes from a reversal of the work's English title; Xerxes becomes Sex Rex, the first century Persian king is actually something of a sex maniac.

That's actually an original and refreshing way of looking at the traditional role of the powerful ruler's involvement in a situation that is common in opera seria. Disrupting the romantic lives of everyone around him when he decides to choose a partner for himself, often it's seen in terms of a ruler being self-absorbed and oblivious to the concerns of others, asserting his will in an abuse of power. Nowadays that kind of behaviour from someone in a position of power and authority is seen differently as a sex pest or sexual predator, but Herheim doesn't attempt to put it in a modern context in the style for example of the 2017 Karlsruhe Semele.

Herheim in fact doesn't appear to choose to delve any more deeply than the simple reversal of the title however in this production of Xerxes, and rather than modernise the production or seek to put it in the context of a framework, he seems instead to just let it play out looking like a period production from 1738 when the opera was composed. Or is it a parody of an old opera seria production? This is where Herheim likes to blur the lines, but he gives little away to indicate any kind of irony or detachment, other than perhaps the fact that the behaviours of the characters are more recognisably human than the rather stiff formalism of roles and characters that you might expect from this.

But what might you reasonably expect from Xerxes? When the opera was first performed it wasn't terribly popular because it broke several of the strict rules of opera seria. For a start, Handel reduced the formality of da capo repetition in arias, reducing most of them down to one-part arias, which doesn't give the singers quite as much leeway for ornamentation. He also introduced an element of buffo comedy into the work, and mixing buffo and seria is a serious misdemeanour that in earlier times in France was known to result in a war, or at least a war of words in the Querelle des Bouffons.

Handel, I imagine, wasn't trying to start any wars, but simply reacting to the practical demands of the storyline, which to be frank was surely a rather tired situation even by Handel's time, and introduce a little more musical colour to the palette. Which he undoubtedly does, but perhaps not to the extent that the work can be staged 'straight' to a modern audience. I've no doubt that Stefan Herheim has thoroughly researched this, but as far as I can see, all he has managed to come up with as a way of tapping into the spirit of the work and presenting it to a modern audience is to exaggerate the other elements or bring them up to the level of Xerxes the Sex Rex.

Elviro as the comic fool for example, is played up to an almost slapstick level where he can hardly move for stumbling or bumping into people. Herheim even has him arguing with the prompter and the conductor in the pit, and Xerxes in annoyance breaks a musician's flute. Atalanta is extra-flirtatious and scheming, Romilda extra-prim and virtuous resulting in Atalanta's plots to remove her rival by attacking her in one scene with a knife, a snake, a gun, a cannon which puts a hole in the back of the scenery through to the backstage, then uses a crossbow and eventually succeeds only in bringing down a doll of Eros. With some dancing sheep thrown in, Herheim himself describes it all as a “baroque Muppet Show”.

There's no doubt that this enlivens the work to some degree, and it's quite clever in a nudge and a wink kind of way that recognises we are all actors playing roles on the stage of life, but there's not a lot more to it than that. There perhaps doesn't need to be for this opera, particularly when the production values are as high as we've come to expect from a Herheim production. If it's not a parody of an 18th century opera, it has all of the old-world spectacle of the stage design, props and costumes. It looks good, it sounds good, it's a bit of fun, and that ought to be enough, but it doesn't really do much to lessen the predictability and conventionality of the drama from feeling very tiring over the three hours it takes to get to a conclusion.

Perhaps that's down to the work itself which, hearing it for the first time, doesn't seem to rate among the most memorable of Handel's works. There's moments to enjoy of course in the musical performance under the direction of Konrad Junghänel who keeps it flowing along quite well. With recitative in German and the principal arias in Italian, the singing performances are good, counter-tenor Valer Sabadus in the castrato role of Xerxes tries hard to inject life and humour into the proceedings, Katarina Bradic as his cross-dressing jilted fiancée Amastre brings a lively verve to her performance. There's much to enjoy also in the complications between Atalanta, Romilda, Arsamene and Elviro, but the singing doesn't always have the necessary fullness and, despite all the efforts and prettiness of the production, it does come across as a disappointingly limp affair.

Links: Deutsche Oper am Rhein, OperaVision, YouTube

Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades (DNO, 2016)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades

Dutch National Opera, 2016

Mariss Jansons, Stefan Herheim, Misha Didyk, Alexey Markov, Vladimir Stoyanov, Andrei Popov, Andrii Goniukov, Mikhail Makarov, Anatoli Sivko, Larissa Diadkova, Svetlana Aksenova, Anna Goryachova, Olga Savova, Maria Fiselier, Pelageya Kurennaya, Morschi Franz, Christiaan Kuyvenhoven

The Opera Platform - July 2016

Never one to take an opera libretto on face value, Stefan Herheim's production of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades for the Dutch National Opera is another of his composer portrait productions. Herheim is a director who likes to explore a composer's life and times and see how they inform the works they create, and consideration of Tchaikovsky's life, his passions and particularly his repressed homosexuality, make those great works all the more fascinating. Perhaps not so much for anyone less familiar with the composer or someone just wants to see a more straightforward account of Pushkin's tale.

Herheim's previous work at the DNO with Tchaikovsky led to the creation of a Eugene Onegin that presented a kaleidoscopic view of Russian culture and history. As much as Tchaikovsky's intimate love story might have seemed inappropriate for such a grand treatment, it did nonetheless successfully tap into deeper undercurrents of the Russian nature of the work and open up an entirely new perspective on it. The Queen of Spades, by way of contrast, draws back on the Russian nature of the work towards the more intimate and personal, making a direct link between Hermann's mad passions and those of the composer himself.

Herheim might have sidelined Wagner to each of the Act Preludes of his Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg in his previous (unimaginative) composer portrait, but it's clear that Tchaikovsky himself is going to be firmly at the centre of the DNO's The Queen of Spades. The opening scene before the overture shows a man who looks very like Tchaikovsky - but who later principally plays the part of a Yeletsky as an older man - paying a soldier who he has just given a blow-job, a soldier who turns out to be Hermann. It's an image that on the surface has nothing to do with the Queen of Spades and is clearly designed to shock, but it's not without justification for the examination of secret and illicit passions that drive much of the work.

Fired with invigoration and some measure of shame, Tchaikovsky is immediately inspired to pour his feelings into his music, making for the piano with pen and paper to hand to dash down the overture and the opening scene of the Queen of Spades. He then inserts himself into the opera as Yeletsky, who is engaged to marry Liza. A reference to Tchaikovsky's own failed attempt at marriage, Yeletsky's sincere and dignified approaches and his later protestations of love as a deep friendship are also significant. "Tchaikovsky" also flees from Liza's desire to believe in Hermann's sincerity in the bridge scene (which evidently doesn't take place on a bridge). All of this can be seen to mirror in some respects the inappropriateness and unviability of Tchaikovsky's own marriage, particularly as we know from the first scene that Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky's inclinations lean another way.

Thereafter it is impossible not to view Yeletsky as anything else but a surrogate for Tchaikovsky, but we are also invited by Herheim to see Tchaikovsky in Liza's friend Pauline and in other characters. It's as if Tchaikovsky has poured various aspects of his own personality into all the characters in the opera, which is a valid way of looking at art even if it doesn't really take the motivations of the original author Pushkin into consideration. It also tends to become complicated when you try to fit Hermann into the equation. As the person whose mad passions are central to the work, it would seem more obvious to associate Hermann with the composer, but Herheim doesn't always do the obvious.

That's because, to judge by the music and the composition of the opera, Tchaikovsky is evidently a lot more complex a personality than Hermann is in the Queen of Spades. There's a lot of indulgence on the part of Tchaikovsky in the musical arrangements of this work, but these are traits that can also be played upon to good effect, particularly in the second Act with its Pastorale and the grand fanfares to welcome the arrival of Catherine the Great. Herheim seems to poke fun at such extravagances, but at the same time he tries to make it relevant to who Tchaikovsky is, or might be, as the man behind the music. This culminates with Hermann flouncing in as 'the Queen' however, which is more camp than psychological - but then there's always a thin line there where Herheim is concerned. And perhaps Tchaikovsky too.

The mirroring of Tchaikovsky with every element of The Queen of Spades is problematic, but Herheim is not attempting a full deconstruction or psychoanalytical reading of the opera. If you want to you can consider Hermann's obsessive behaviour on a more generalised level as being symptomatic of a pathology that develops when secrets are kept hidden, you could take that from it. Rather than adding layers by including Tchaikovsky himself in the drama, it does seem more of a case of stripping the work back to its bones and exploring the emotions that underlie it.

Much like his production of Eugene Onegin, unless you are very familiar with Tchaikovsky and already know the story of the Queen of Spades, you're not going to get much out of this. Even if you do manage to pick up and piece together the elements that Herheim introduced, the value of those speculative fantasies into Tchaikovsky's motivations are scarcely any more valuable than the work (and Pushkin's work) itself. I suspect that most people would prefer to just see the story told well rather than have all these confusing and contradictory elements weighing it down. Fortunately, the production has much more to offer.

As it often is with Herheim, the production design is extravagantly beautiful. The action takes place mostly in a single drawing room that converts into a ballroom as required - although if you are less literal minded, you could see it as taking place entirely within Tchaikovsky's own mind, which obviously it does on one level. Whichever way you look at it, Philipp Fürhofer's set and costume design is just magnificent, the lighting immaculate in terms of mood as well as simply illuminating the set to look its best. Somehow, the DNO seem to have managed to persuade Mariss Jansons to work with Stefan Herheim again, despite his evident confusion (seen in the behind the scenes feature on the DVD release) over what the director was trying to achieve in their previous collaboration on Eugene Onegin. Jansons; conducting of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra through Tchaikovsky's rich score is just ravishing in its attention to the mood, to the little orchestral flourishes and to the dramatic intent of the work. This is really another wonderful collaboration.

Last but not least, the singing is outstanding. There's really no substitute for a Russian cast singing Russian opera, and the cast here are all marvellous. I've been critical of the anguished whine of Misha Didyk in the past, but he has "filled out" a little in appearance since I last saw him sing this role and that tight, high constricted tenor has also expanded into a fuller, more rounded timbre. It's by no means an easy role to sing at the best of times, but Didyk is impressive here and may even be the ideal Hermann. Because of the dual role and the acting requirements, Yeletsky/Tchaikovsky is more challenging here than the role usually is, but Vladimir Stoyanov is superb, his voice warm, lyrical and sensitive.

Larissa Diadkova is an experienced Countess, and proves her worth here again. Svetlana Aksenova's Liza is also impressive, but there's a feeling that Herheim has paid less attention to the women in the opera, or at least found Tchaikovsky's writing of them to be not as interesting as the male characters. Liza's finale however is well-staged. All the roles are most impressive, and there's much to enjoy simply in the beauty of the singing performances here. And in the choral arrangements. I'm beginning to think that the DNO build their season around works that will show their chorus off in the best possible light. The precision of the employment of the chorus is all important to the wider dynamic of this work and once again, the DNO chorus are nothing short of phenomenal.

Links: The Opera Platform, DNO

Verdi - Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Giuseppe Verdi - Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Royal Opera House, London, 2013

Antonio Pappano, Stefan Herheim, Lianna Haroutounian, Bryan Hymel, Erwin Schrott, Michael Volle, Michelle Daly, Neal Cooper, Nicholas Darmanin, Jung Soo Yun, Jihoon Kim, Jean Teitgen, Jeremy White

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 4 November 2013

It was a little bit disappointing to discover that Verdi's famous 'Four Seasons' ballet sequence had been cut from this new production of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, only now being performed at the Royal Opera House in the original French version for the first time. Stefan Herheim is usually such a thorough director, meticulous in his construction (and often reconstruction) of works, examining them from every level from their subject matter to context and subtext. Surely Verdi's 30-minute long ballet forms an important part of Les Vêpres Siciliennes?

On the other hand, there's a good reason why the ballet is often cut even on those rare occasions that the original French version of the work is put on. There are Grand Opéra mannerisms aplenty in the five acts of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, perhaps too many for a modern audience to endure. As it turns out however, Stefan Herheim doesn't actually shy away from the challenges of incorporating the ballet but rather cleverly finds an alternative and rather more acceptable means of including it. Paying careful attention to the music as always and recognising that all of the themes that are brought out in the music of the ballet are there also in the heart of Verdi's remarkable scoring for the work, he includes ballet elements throughout the length of the opera itself.

Those themes, which are condensed within the Four Seasons ballet sequence, are all to do with the changing of the seasons, with life and death, the past, history and politics involved, and how they weigh heavily on families and individuals caught up in momentous events. Verdi's take on grand opéra is extraordinary, the composer making the most of the opportunity to expand his range and take expression in his music much further than before. He weaves these themes dynamically together, finding depth and subtext, suggesting much more than is evident on the surface. Herheim rather fearlessly tries to break these themes down again and find a way to express each of them visually. And, in his own inimitable way, he throws a few other ideas in there for consideration. Despite all this, Les Vêpres Siciliennes surprisingly proves to be a relatively straightforward Herheim production.

Principally, Herheim does what he often does - he brings the composer and the creation of the work into the work itself. What's interesting about the way it's done here however is that it manages to avoid all the usual Risorgimento trappings. The political climate and Verdi's part in the revolutionary activities of the period (often overstated) evidently form a part of it, but the director here is more interested in Verdi in Paris, Verdi writing Grand Opéra, the period, the venue and even the work's place in opera history. Accordingly the most immediately distinctive part of the staging is that it's an opera within an opera. Les Vêpres Siciliennes is played out with the French audience of 1855 taking the place of the French soldiers in 13th-century Sicily, with the interior of the Paris Opera house forming a backdrop and ballet dancers on the stage dressed like those in paintings by Degas.

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary baggage to add on top of the work itself, but Verdi's choice of subject for the French audience is an interesting one and worth exploring since it undoubtedly informed the creation of the work. Arguably it's even more important since Les Vêpres Siciliennes is primarily an opera and not history, the story cobbled together from a libretto for Donizetti's unfinished Le Duc d'Albe which had a 16th century Dutch historical setting. The reason it works so well in this production then is due to another of Herheim's strengths - his ability to make the characters come to life and his use of space on the stage to reflect their personalities and situation, opening up and closing down, only using what is necessary for impact and always finding a way to get that impact across at the right points, if not exactly in a conventional manner. And marshalling diverse forces to make a necessary impact is what opera is all about.

That isn't something that Verdi himself always manages in Les Vêpres Siciliennes. As fascinating a work as it is coming at this period in the composer's career, it is a somewhat imperfect opera. The production and the singing can help, but even they are limited in this particular production. The first two acts in particular are not entirely successful, even though Herheim attempts to establish the prologue to the story in the overture, where Henri's mother - here a dancer at the ballet school run by Procida - is raped by one of the French soldiers, Guy de Montfort. Hélène then appears dressed as a vengeful woman in black, mourning for the loss of her brother Frédéric, carrying his mummified head around with her, waving it accusingly at the French soldiers with the officers sitting behind in the best opera box seats.

Despite some remarkable writing and a powerful account of the score from Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera House orchestra, the first two acts can't seem to bring any kind of coherence or purpose to the structure in which the events are laid out, and they consequently come across as rather flat. The last thing you need at this stage then is a 30-minute ballet on top of it, so its omission at this point is clearly justified, particularly as there is no shortage of ballet dancers on the stage throughout, and their significance - some wearing white tutus, others black - has been well established in the prologue. All the stops are pulled out however for the impact that the personal situations and events of the past bring to Acts III to V.

Yes, there's glorious music throughout, but even in these latter acts there are traps that could bring the whole thing down, particularly in the unsatisfactory conclusions reached in Act V. Herheim however takes full advantage of Verdi's orchestration of these developments, making powerful use of the choruses that represent the masses of the soldiers and the people, and the people against the soldiers. You can feel in them the sense of simmering nationalist resentment, but because of Herheim's direction, you can also understand the complicated personal issues of the past and the family connections that have been brought into it all which more significantly influence the outcome. It's in high melodrama territory certainly, but Herheim works with the intimacy of Verdi's writing to make it feel real and vital.

It has to feel real and vital as far as the singers are concerned also, and by and large, this was successfully achieved. There was some concern expressed by Marina Poplavskaya's dropping out of the production at the last moment and some opinions expressed that Lianna Haroutounian wasn't a strong enough replacement, but I thought she performed marvellously.  Her Hélène didn't make so much of an impression in the opening acts, but her character gained in strength and personality after the interval, and Haroutounian rose to meet those demands. Bryan Hymel again proved himself well suited to this repertoire particularly as the role of Henri is considerably less punishing than Robert le Diable. Michael Volle was a solid threatening presence as Montfort, the role sung with characteristic nuance and warmth from this performer. Erwin Schrott is also a performer with great personal presence and sang very well, but he seemed a little too laid-back as Procida. Herheim's mastery of the work however and Antonio Pappano's conduction ensured however that everything came together perfectly to achieve the kind of satisfying and powerful conclusion than the work really needs.

Puccini - La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème

Den Norske Opera, Oslo, 2012

Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Stefan Herheim, Diego Torre, Vasilij Ladjuk, Marita Sølberg, Jennifer Rowley, Giovanni Battista Parodi, Espen Langvik, Svein Erik Sagbråten, Teodor Benno Vaage

Electric Picture

The first notes you hear in this 2012 Den Norske Opera production of Puccini's La Bohème are the beeps of a heart monitor on a life support system that Mimi lies attached to in a hospital bed.  The beeps take that familiar flatline tone as Mimi breathes her last and doctors rush in to the opening chords of the score proper in a vain attempt to resuscitate her, while Rodolfo looks on aghast, completely lost in his own grief.  This evidently isn't a traditional way to start La Bohème, but it is very much a typical Stefan Herheim touch where the standard linear approach is just not an option.  As a director, Herheim is clearly interested in getting into the minds of characters whose actions and motivations we can take for granted from over-familiarity, and La Bohème is a very familiar opera.  Not here it isn't.

Having established that Mimi dies - which, let's face it, even if you weren't familiar with the opera, it's a fate that is signalled clearly enough by Puccini right from the moment she totters and stumbles into Rodolfo's garret, often with a hefty tubercular cough for good measure - Herheim is more interested in the impact her death has on Rodolfo after the opera ends, considering the times and the troubles they have shared together.  Here then, viewed in flashback, La Bohème becomes a study of grief and bereavement that Rodolfo struggles to work through and eventually come to an acceptance of his loss through his poetry and his friends.  If anyone can make such an idea work, working within the fabric of Puccini's scoring without necessarily contradicting sentiments that are implicitly there in the nature of the music itself, it's Herheim.  Whether you think there's any value in distorting the work to that extent is of course debatable, but there is certainly more intelligence in this thoughtful and considered approach than your average straight production that merely "performs" the work, Herheim taking into account the very real emotions and troubles of characters whose lives are played out in art and poverty.  It's certainly at least a refreshing alternative for anyone who is more than familiar with the long-running Copley and Miller productions of the work at the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum in London.

His grief played out in flashback then, the past and the present coexist simultaneously for Rodolfo, who has no means of pulling them together.  The hospital ward seen at the start then opens up to a more traditional view of the past in Rodolfo's Parisian garret where he and Mimi first met, the cleaner, surgeon and nurse taking up roles as the other characters (introducing Musetta into the process rather earlier too).  The sense of perspective however shifts in a subtle way to tinge the meeting with that sense of grief for the inevitability of what has happened/will happen.  When Rodolfo poses the question 'Qui sono?' to himself here then - looking thoroughly confused - it takes on an entirely different meaning, one that involves real soul-searching, as well as a certain existential dilemma.  Compressing and overlapping time in this way simultaneously concentrates all the joy and happiness of that fleeting moment of beauty, while forcing one to consider how brief and vulnerable are the flames of love on those candles that are so soon to burn out.  The same flames of love will burn Rodolfo as well as provide warmth through the winter.  Rather than contradict the emotions of a beautiful piece (Act 1 of La Bohème is for me something incredibly powerful), this production genuinely enhances what is already there.

There are lots of touches however that aren't going to be to everyone's liking.  Already in this First Act, Mimi collapses, her wig is removed to reveal a bald head that bears the signs of chemotherapy (this Mimi is dying from the rather more contemporary killer of cancer rather than the traditional old-fashioned disease of tuberculosis), and she is ushered back into that modern hospital bed that looms at the corner of Rodolfo's consciousness.  The shifting of the off-kilter sets from one 'reality' to the next - incredibly well designed to transform so smoothly - have an unsettling effect not only on Rodolfo but on the viewer also, leaving them unsure at times about what exactly is going on, and why the familiar figures in the work don't behave in character in the way that we expect.  Mimi "dies" again at the end of Act II, for example, and her medical chart is added to the Café Momus "bill" that has to be paid at the end.  I think the implication is clear enough.  Unwilling to "pay the bill" however the near-demented Rodolfo here is so impassioned that you get the impression he believes he could bring her ghost back to life by the end of the opera.  Wouldn't that be something?  But no, Herheim stays faithful to the intentions of the work.  "Per richiamarla in vita non basta amore" - "Love alone will not suffice to bring her back to life", he says in Act III.  It's all there in the libretto if you want to look for it.

The absurd modern twists on an otherwise faithful staging can be a little off-putting - or will be simply intolerable to some viewers - but they can also be extremely powerful.  If you consider that Puccini's writing here is extremely manipulative and has a tendency towards heavy pathos, sentimentality and schmaltz, Herheim's staging forces you to listen to the music in a different context, and the effect is phenomenal.  Puccini, like the listener, knows Mimi's fate from the outset, and doesn't pretend otherwise.  The tragedy isn't so much that Rodolfo doesn't know it, or that he is unwilling to face up to her flirtatious and mercenary nature, or even the realisation that she's seriously ill and going to die, but rather, that he is on some level aware of it, but still loves her despite it all.  All those implications are there in Puccini's score and brought out in the development of the opera if you want to explore them, and Herheim does.  Using Rodolfo's inability to come to terms with his grief as a means of showing his struggle to deal with the inevitability of what must occur not only makes this almost indescribably sad, it's also an effective way of dealing with some of the problematic issues surrounding Puccini's generously expressive scoring.

Aside from the technicalities and impressions created by Herheim's direction and Heike Scheele's set designs, the performance of the work itself is overall very good.  The added dramatic twists moreover rather than getting in the way of the performances only seemed to intensify their impassioned delivery.  More so Rodolfo than Mimi, it has to be said, Diego Torre singing the role superbly, with consideration for the different nuances of meaning applied to his character.  By focussing the attention on Rodolfo's state of mind and resigning Mimi to little more than a ghost however, the consequence is that it weakens Marita Sølberg's contribution to the work, but she sings it well in the context.  The subjective view of Rodolfo also has a consequence of reducing the relevance of the other characters to relatively minor roles, but even if it loses some of the contrasting elements of the nature of relationships that is brought out by the Marcello and Musetta pairing (adequately sung by Vasilij Ladjuk and Jennifer Rowley), the tightening of the focus isn't necessarily a bad thing in this work either.  Svein Erik Sagbråten's recurring Death-like presence as the landlord Benoît, Parpignol, Alcindoro and a Toll gate keeper could also be seen as bringing more of a consistency to the colourful but marginal episodes of the work.

On Blu-ray, the production looks and sounds as good as you would expect from a recent HD recording.  The singing sounds a little echoing in both the PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes, but I found that the stereo track sounded much clearer through headphones.  The recording and mixing of the orchestra however is gorgeous, with lovely tone and detail in the orchestration.  It's a good account of the work - Eivind Gullberg Jensen directing the opera for the first time - attuned to the performances and only slightly adjusted in one or two places for the tempo and tone to match the production.  There are a few very short interviews on the disc (around a minute each) with the director, conductor and cast, done backstage in the intervals presumably during a television broadcast of the live performance.  The BD is all-region, with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Korean.

Dvořák - Rusalka

Antonín Dvořák - Rusalka

La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels, 2012

Ádám Fischer, Stefan Herheim, Myrtò Papatanasiu, Pavel Cernoch, Annalena Persson, Renée Morloc, Ekaterina Isachenko, Julian Hubbard, André Grégoire, Marc Coulon

La Monnaie, Internet Steaming, 14 and 16th March 2012

Watching Stefan Herheim’s production of Dvořák’s 1901 opera for La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels (performed in March 2012 and broadcast via their internet streaming service), I began to think that we are getting to a point now where it would be something of a novelty to see Rusalka done as a straight fairytale. From Martin Kušej’s brilliant envisioning for Munich of the water nymph as an abused young woman held in captivity in an underground basement to the recent debacle of the production for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, which placed Rusalka in a brothel, there’s a predictable familiarity now to seeing Rusalka as an abused woman at the hands of men. Stefan Herheim’s production then may seem to adhere to this modern revisionism of the role by casting her as a prostitute, but by altering the perspective of the work to that of the Water Goblin, her “captor”, gives an interesting new view on the central theme of the corruption of innocence.

This Rusalka is considerably different in temperament then from how Kušej and Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito view the character, or indeed from a traditional view of the water nymph. Here, on a street corner, on a remarkably lifelike stage set that could be a street corner on any middle or eastern European city (albeit with an English bobby on the beat), the streetwalking Rusalka is all glitter and glamour in the eyes of the old man, Vodník, who wants to possess her and keep her for his own pleasure – a femme fatale who, in the end, will drive him to commit a violent crime of passion. This Rusalka is no innocent – she’s street-smart and wise to the dangers that her lifestyle and clients like the old man represent and she dreams of a better life out of the dark world she lives in, but is she really cut out for the refinement of the world above? It’s this inability to deal with the disappointment that her unrealistic idealisation of what a normal life and love means, certainly as far as men are concerned, that is to be her tragedy here.

There’s quite a leap involved in making Rusalka a prostitute, and characteristically for this director – like his recent Eugene Onegin for De Nederlandse Opera – there’s a great deal of complexity to how the narrative is structured in order to make this idea work and a significant altering of traditional perspective. Perhaps surprisingly however, the director’s approach of actually listening to the music and not just the libretto would seem to justify and bear out his approach here. The musical theme for the Water Goblin is indeed threaded through the work as a leitmotif, and it gives Herheim the justification to consider how women are looked upon and objectified by men from a modern perspective, as well as from the older tradition.

This Rusalka consequently may not be the most flattering or politically correct view of women – witches, prostitutes and nuns feature, many of them with exaggerated female figures in quite obscene body suits, the nuns even taking part in an orgy – and there is a great deal of violence enacted against them in brutal stabbings, but it’s precisely through this kind of altered perspective that the director intends to show an idealisation that the reality doesn’t live up to. It’s fascinating then that Herheim does indeed manage to get to the root of Rusalka’s tragedy through this mirrored perspective – the old man/water goblin present on the stage as a witness almost throughout – as it is by being the object of the desires and ideals of men that Rusalka is prevented (kept silent by a curse) from expressing who she wants to be herself.

You have to work hard however to get to this realisation as there is a bewildering array of imagery on the stage and considerable twists to characterisation that will be difficult to disentangle even for someone very familiar with the work. This includes a wife for the Vodník, who is not in the original libretto, who has a non-singing role, although she is played by the same singer (Annalena Persson) who is the Foreign Princess. While this and some other doubling of roles may initially be confusing, it reflects the director’s view of mirroring reality with the fantasy “fairytale” view of world that is fabricated in the mind of the old man/water goblin. At the very least however, the sheer effort of trying to fit it all together commands attention and forces the audience to reconsider what the work is actually about. Unless you thinkRusalka is just a lyric fairytale and is perfectly fine in that form without all the psychological probing.

Also commanding is the spectacle on the stage itself, which really is quite extraordinary. This production (originally staged for the first time in 2008 as a co-production between La Monnaie and Oper Graz) really is quite the most brilliant use of stage-craft I’ve seen in an opera for a long time. Some of it seems abstract and inconsistent with the themes, but you’ll probably find it fits in some kind of weird way, and is certainly never anything less than dazzling and thought-provoking. The street scene, designed by Heike Scheele, is remarkably realistic but, in keeping with the fantasy/reality theme, elements explode out and upward, as if you were looking at a children’s pop-up book – the counter of the corner café extending out into the street, an advertising pillar appearing out of the ground, on which Rusalka is perched as if on a pedestal, with a mermaid tail dipped inside the pillar. If you still can’t make sense of it all – it took me quite a little while to come around to the idea and the concept – the immensely powerful coup de theatre of the conclusion at least should bring the full impact and realisation of the meaning of the work in Herheim’s vision of its present day application as well as its relevance to Dvořák’s original work.

With performances as good as that of the principals cast here moreover, you’ll happily put up with some shock and befuddlement. As Rusalka and the Prince, Myrtò Papatanasiu and Pavel Cernoch are just magnificent. This Rusalka isn’t the usual wide-eyed innocent, but Papatanasiu nonetheless manages to bring across the vulnerability of her character as well as the inner strength of personality that seeks to express herself within this world dominated by the desires of men. She does that in her acting performance and she does it in her singing, and most impressively. The Prince can also be somewhat of a cipher, so it’s wonderful likewise to see the role sung so well and with some consideration of the duality of his nature. He can’t help himself when it comes to the beautiful vision in white that is Rusalka, or the attraction of the Foreign Princess who appeals to his baser desires. He’s only a man after all. There’s consequently steel in Cernoch’s voice as well as a wonderful lyricism.

Both Papatanasiu and Pavel Cernoch are both powerful enough singers in their own right – Willard White as the Water Goblin isn’t quite up to their level, but he is a strong presence nonetheless – but conductor Ádám Fischer ensures that they are never overpowered by the orchestra. The performance of the orchestra can perhaps feel a little restrained, but not unexpectedly, it seemed to capture the post-Wagnerian Romanticism of the piece well. Admittedly however, while the image quality is superb, the audio track on an internet stream wasn’t clear enough to hear the detail as well as it would sound on a High Definition Blu-ray disc. Superbly directed for the screen, this however is one spectacular production that certainly merits a wider HD release.

The internet stream of Rusalka at La Monnaie is available for viewing only until the 26th April (with French and Dutch subtitles only). The next production to be shown is Oscar Bianchi’s Thanks to my Eyes on 12 April, which will be available for viewing for 21 days.

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, 2011

Mariss Jansons, Stefan Herheim, Krassimira Stoyanova, Bo Skovhus, Mikhail Petrenko, Andrej Dunaev, Elena Maximova, Guy de Mey, Roger Smeets, Peter Arink, Richard Prada

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Tchaikovsky’s approach to opera is conventional in some aspects of its Romantic style, but there’s also a distinctive character to his music through its use of folk arrangements that are thoroughly linked to Russian character of those operatic subjects. The operas may seem designed to show off the range of the composer’s abilities, with dancing to mazurkas, polonaises and waltzes, with folk songs and extravagant choral and symphonic interludes, but they are all there just as much to explore fully the broad scope and colour of the Russian character itself. That’s evident as much in The Queen of Spades as in Cherevichki, but perhaps nowhere more effectively than in his most famous opera – and as far as I’m concerned his greatest opera – Eugene Onegin.

What’s most impressive about Eugene Onegin – both from Tchaikovsky’s viewpoint as well as its original author Pushkin’s – is how it manages to compact all those diverse, contradictory, deeply romantic and sometimes self-destructive features of the Russian character into what on the surface seems a simple romantic story of love and rejection. Within this however is the same nature of throwing of one’s self into the hands of fate that gives one of the most suicidal of gambling sports its name – Russian Roulette. It’s there in The Queen of Spades of course, in the belief that one’s life can change on the magical turn of a hand of cards, based on another Pushkin story, and it’s even there in the life of Pushkin himself, who reputedly fought twenty-nine duels and was finally killed in one at the age of 37. It’s there also in Tchaikovsky’s own life, the composer going through a personal crisis at the time of the opera with his homosexuality, yet entering into an ill-advised marriage on the basis that, as he wrote to a friend “No man can escape his destiny”. There are examples of this fatalistic character throughout Russian literature and opera, as in Prokofiev’s The Gambler (adapted from a work by Fyodor Dostoevsky), but it’s richly present throughout Eugene Onegin.

It’s there in Act I, in Tatyana, a young girl living on a country estate who is introduced by her neighbour to the handsome figure of Eugene Onegin, when she all but swoons at his presence and immediately pours her heart out to him the same night in a deeply revealing letter where she opens her heart to him. It’s there also Act II, in Onegin’s callous disregard of her sensitivities and his determination to throw himself into life rather than settle down into a marriage that will become stale through habit. It’s there in that typically Russian custom of the duel when Lensky demands satisfaction for behaviour towards the young woman, and finally, and perhaps most powerfully in this work, it’s there in Act III when Onegin reencounters Tatyana and recognises the emptiness that he has pursued all his life and throws himself at her feet only to in turn be cruelly rejected.

It’s a relatively simple storyline, but it’s richly orchestrated by Tchaikovsky to capture all the nuances of the emotional content as well as the deeper cultural drives and impulses that lie beneath them. It’s full of passion and character so it’s surprising then how coldly and calculatingly the opera can often be put across. That will often depend on the interpretation of the conductor and stage director and on how much emphasis to give to Tchaikovsky’s score, but as far as this De Nederlandse production goes, with Mariss Jansons conducting and Stefan Herheim directing, it’s a passionate and expansive account of the opera, though one that many will inevitably feel takes too many liberties with the libretto.

As far as the staging goes, the young Norwegian director does place the figures into somewhat irregular configurations. You’ll see that from the outset as Onegin walks onto the stage a scene before he should be formally introduced, looking thoroughly confused and walking moreover into what looks like a hotel lobby, with an elevator and a revolving door, where Tanya and her family are together. Similarly, there are few of the usual separations of characters in scenes that one would be accustomed to. Even when Tanya should be writing her famous love letter to the young man she has just been introduced to, it’s staged here with Onegin actually writing the letter, while her husband, Prince Gremin, lies in bed behind them. This could be thoroughly confusing for anyone who is unfamiliar with the opera, but it will not make a lot of sense to anyone who is familiar with the work and who would be quite happy to see it played out in the traditional linear manner.

The concept applied here, of course (although it might not be that obvious), is that the figures are reflecting back on the events from an older perspective, and the setting picks up on the mirroring of the situations. That’s most evident when Onegin directs his rejection of Tatyana to a silent younger girl in a white dress, while Krassimira Stoyanova, who actually sings the role of Tatyana, wearing a red dress (there may be some colour coding to reflect the differing perspectives) looks on as a spectator on her own past. Whether you consider that this distorts the intentions of Eugene Onegin or whether you feel that it opens it up underlying themes within the work will obviously depend on your taste, but the motivations of the director, inspired or misguided though they may be judged to be, are at least derived from a close attention paid to the work and a genuine attempt to understand it. Eugene Ongein is not a naturalistic work, and this production not only attempts to convey the poetic dream-like quality of the storyline with all its romanticised ideals and passions, but it also attempts to get beneath Tchaikovsky’s own personal relationship with the work and the expression of his own nature in the composition. That seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavour, but whether it’s judged as successful is evidently a matter for the individual listener/viewer.

It does however add another level of complication to a work that is already enriched in emotions and in their peculiar Russian expression. In fact its attempt to bring this latter aspect to the fore to increasingly bizarre effect in Act II and Act III might be taking on rather too much and pushing an already quite eccentric production – such as the unusual touches applied to the M. Triquet scene and Onegin’s second at the duel actually being a bottle of wine – a little too far. Act III’s Polonaise attempts to bring in an historical tableau vivant of all walks of Russian life, with a dancing bear, Cosmonauts, Russian gymnasts, Swan Lake dancers, royalty and religious leaders, Red Army troops and sailors, folk dancers, serfs and Prince Gremin heading up a Russian mafia outfit, and if all that sounds like it has nothing to do with Eugene Onegin, you’d be entitled to think so and decide that this is not a production for you, but at the same time it can be seen as historically being a part of everything Russian that is enshrined within the essence of Pushkin and Tchaikovsky’s work.

What I think is beyond question however is that Jansons and Herheim bring out the full latent potential of Eugene Onegin here, without restraint, but also without over-emphasis. Regardless of whether the concept makes rational sense or appeals to personal taste, this is a passionate and moving account of the work on a musical and a dramatic level. The singing is also exceptionally good here. You might like a younger person singing Tatyana, but a younger singer couldn’t sing this role half as well. It needs a mature voice, and Krassimira Stoyanova‘s is wonderfully toned, controlled with impeccable technique and emotionally expressive. Bo Skovhus brings a great intensity also to this Onegin who is tortured by his nature of being Russian. He’s not the strongest voice in the role, but he sings it well. Mikhail Petrenko’s Prince Gremin and Andrej Dunaev’s Lensky are also worthy of the production. The very fine team of the Chorus of the De Nederlandse opera provide their usual sterling work.

Blu-ray specifications are all in order. The video quality is good, the picture clear, even though it is often dark on the stage and there are some slight fluctuations in brightness adjustment. The PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 audio tracks are strong and impressive, with a wonderful tone. Extras on the disc include a Cast Gallery and a 30 minute documentary feature where the director explains – not always convincingly and certainly always clearly to conductor Jansons – his thought-process for the work, with backstage interviews, rehearsals and a look at the costume designs. The booklet contains an essay examining the work and the production and includes a synopsis. The disc is BD50, 16:9, 1080i full HD. Subtitles are in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.