Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Höllander
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2019
Fabio Luisi, Paul Curran, Thomas Gazheli, Marjorie Owens, Mikhail Petrenko, Bernhard Berchtold, Annette Jahns, Timothy Oliver
C-Major - Blu-ray
There's no question that Paul Curran's 2019 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production gets the mood and tone of Der fliegende Höllander exactly as you would expect a spooky maritime ghost story to look, populated by dark dishevelled figures and bathed in an eerie cold green-blue light. This mood of menace is enhanced through a large projected backdrop of raging seas as Daland's ship is run aground and a dark ship with tattered sails materialises, silhouetted against the background of a stormy sky. Keeping in that vein with no modern costumes or props, Act I of this production holds no real surprises, just the appropriate tone to set up Wagner's tale of an exiled wanderer seeking redemption and the love of a good woman.
There are however various strands you can develop out of that; the self-portrait of an artist in exile, an outsider with great riches to share daring to brave the tides of public opinion, but the strongest theme and the one that certainly overrides all the others by the time we get to the end of Wagner's first successful exploration of his own developing means of expression, is of course that of redemption. It's the Dutchman who is saved, but it's Senta who saves him and she is the centre of the opera, structurally, musically and thematically.
For director Paul Curran the idea appears to be that she's a woman who doesn't fit in with her time; she's a feminist before there was a movement, a figurehead if not a leader. In this production she's not sitting sewing with the other women as she should be while her man is out at sea, but she's prepared to believe in a different dream where a woman can make her own choices, as grotesque as that idea might appear to the other women. But is Senta really a proto-feminist? Does she not willingly enter into a marriage of convenience so that her father can line his pockets with his son-in-law's rare wealth? Well, that's for the production to persuade us, and it doesn't totally convince.
In contrast to the coldness and darkness of Act I, Act II is consequently bathed in warmth. The gathering of ladies sewing are all dressed in soft neutral dull brown and yellow colours that sets off the fiery individuality of Senta who stands out from them in a Gothic green silk and satin gown and blazing red hair. Perhaps more crucially, the Florence production has the extra benefit of having in Marjorie Owens a voice that can express that warmth and longing in her voice. Her's is a gorgeous lyrical Senta of rare beauty that holds you mesmerised as she relates her story of the Flying Dutchman. I've often found that Fabio Luisi is a conductor who pays close attention to the stage and the singers, pacing to their strengths, leaving them room to truly express the depth of feeling that lies within this hugely melodramatic opera storyline, and he strikes up an effective relationship that really brings the best out of Owens and consequently out of the work as a whole.
With an emphasis on mood again in Act III - this production of Der fliegende Höllander using the three separate act version rather than the no-interval run-together version - there is again good use made of the projections on a front screen as well as the back screen to capture the ghostly appearance of the Dutchman's crew. Musically, Luisi doesn't really get behind this scene quite as well, but handles the subsequent scene between Senta and Erik with gentle poignant lyricism. The closing moments of the opera however are a thing of beauty, both in terms its staging of Senta's sacrifice and redemption and in how Luisi allows the majesty of the moment to hit home.
There's little here however to carry through any definitive view on Senta as a feminist other than her making her own choices, but if there's nothing strikingly original or distinctive about the production there is nonetheless something compelling and refreshing about how Paul Curran approaches the emotional content of the work. It works well in conjunction with how Luisi conducts the work gracefully rather than stridently or overly forcefully - although he can hit those dramatic punches when required - but also evidently in how it's sung. The combination of those elements creates its own identity that blends beautifully with Wagner's Romantic vision. I personally found it spellbinding.
I'm not greatly familiar with the singers here but pleasantly surprised with the quality of the singing and the interpretation. Marjorie Owens as I've already mentioned is impressive and I look forward to hearing her again. Mikhail Petrenko is an excellent Daland, wonderfully rich timbre and enunciation, even if Daland rarely makes any great impression as a character. Thomas Gazheli's Dutchman is suitably charismatic in a dark enigmatic and slightly dishevelled fraying at the edges kind of way, persuasively capturing that sense of the melancholic suffering artist eternally searching for a Romantic truth. Again Fabio Luisi supports and works with his voice wonderfully. Bernhard Berchtold is also good as Erik.
The Blu-ray from C-Major presents this production well with a vividly detailed HD image filmed in 4K Ultra HD and warm stereo and surround audio mixes. Subtitles are provided in German, English, Korean and Japanese. There are no extra features on the disc and the booklet contains just a tracklist, a brief overview of the work with a few observations on the production and a synopsis, but it's an excellent presentation of the production.
Links: Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Richard Wagner - Parsifal
Teatro Massimo, Palermo - 2020
Omer Meir Wellber, Graham Vick, Tómas Tómasson, Alexei Tanovitski, John Relyea, Thomas Gazheli, Julian Hubbard, Catherine Hunold
ARTE Concert
The unique nature of Parsifal as a Good Friday celebration, as a consecration for the stage of Bayreuth and as a spiritual journey in its own right, means that there are many ways of exploring it in a stage setting. There's no one way that works better than another but the most effective are those that simultaneously tap into and draw on the work for its unique source of power while also bringing something to it. When it comes to Graham Vick you have a director who is capable of doing just that in his own way, which is in a manner that relates it to the world we see around us. That's not so easy with a work that delves into the philosophical and spiritual and areas of religious mysticism, but Parsifal is a work that remains relevant for all time. Somehow Vick and conductor Omer Meir Welber manage to get all those essential qualities together in this January 2020 production at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, or at least in some places better than other.
You can never tell if it's a good thing with an opera but in the case of Parsifal it's not exactly a disadvantage that you can't immediately see the direction a production is going to take even when a full hour and a half of Act I has elapsed. If it adheres however to the underlying sentiment of the work then it will hold and move you and Vick certainly manages to make you feel viscerally what the opera is all about. It might sound like an excuse but more than anything this is an opera you need to feel before you can understand it. It's no surprise that Vick uses familiar modern military and war imagery for Act 1 as a way of establishing that the world is in the midst of a deep crisis, one that it is badly in need of a saviour, a healing and renewing force. In Act I, more than anything, you can feel the pain. And it's not just Amfortas who is in agony, but Gurnemanz, the knights of the Grail and ultimately Parsifal too who comes to feel their pain and suffering.
The setting of Act I is visually simple and minimalised. There's a sandy-looking floor of chipboard with a canvas screen behind, giving the impression of a contemporary Middle Eastern military base with troops in army uniform and Kundry wearing a burka. Vick doesn't appear to intend to impose any political commentary, he just uses images that you will be familiar with as a way to get through to the idea of pain and feeling compassion. As such, the progression of Act I is straightforward but there are unusual touches that stand out. The first is the very Christ-like image of Amfortas, which isn't anything new he makes the first striking impression here wearing a brutal crown of thorns. Gurnemanz's story of the spear is played out in shadows on the canvas, showing images of war, victory and submission. The procession of troops lining up for the unveiling of the grail is not ineffective for it being a tin cup, as the symbolism of what it stands for is fully felt in Amfortas shedding a blood sacrifice. More than that, the shedding of blood is also endured by the troops/knights who painfully open up cuts on their arms. Set to Wagner's miraculous score, it's an immensely powerful first Act.
I've made no mention of Parsifal in Act I as he is purposely nondescript here, which is no reflection on Julian Hubbard who sings the role well here, but this is not his time, nor space for that matter. He's not even 'Parsifal' yet. That comes in an Act II which when it opens quickly undercuts any sense of Klingsor being an otherworldly agent of evil and instead depicts him as a very human one. He's a rogue soldier in fatigues, smoking a cigar, dropping his trousers to reveal the bloodstain of his emasculation. You might expect the flowermaidens to also be wearing burkas in Vick's contemporary Middle Eastern setting, and indeed that is how we see the chorus, but initially the maidens are semi-clad in underwear only, looking on as Parsifal cuts his way through their men, later coming to him seductively in coloured wraps.
The strangest scene in Act II however is the appearance of Kundry as a head only, buried under the sand, positioned in the same place as the grail buried under the sand in Act I. Establishing the nature of Kundry is vital in any Parsifal and here she is not so much the temptress and seductress as having a surrogate motherly quality, bringing an Oedipal edge to her encounter with Parsifal. An iconic image of Mary Magdalene opening up from the floor hints at another side, and Kundry as a woman of course has many sides and many incarnations, weaving a web of illusion that Parsifal brings crashing down with his newly gained wisdom and the power that such wisdom conveys on him.
Just as you can't expect Parsifal to come to knowledge and understanding without undergoing the whole laborious process of learning, you can't expect to know what direction Vick is pointing towards until you get to the conclusion of this Palermo production. It is of course a variation on the idea of a return to the paradise, a return to lost innocence, but Graham Vick depicts this persuasively as the need to become like a child again, throwing off the artificial constructs of religion, war and racism that have led to a corruption of true nature of humanity, and aspiring to be something better. It's there in the Easter message of healing, of Death and Resurrection, wiping away the sins of mankind. In Act III the salvation is that the Knights are no longer called upon to fight wars and bleed. They no longer have the spiritual nourishment that the Grail once provided, a gift that was used in a corrupted way to sustain nationalistic pride and wage war. Now it is turned towards healing and compassion.
Again, this is something that has to be fully felt in order to be fully understood. Some of the shadowplay imagery in Act III is consequently quite shocking, the result of a world thrown into chaos, where coldness and horror hold sway. Amfortas, as a leader of men is tired of it all, even more unwilling to continue to wage an endless war; reluctant to give sustenance and countenance to its continuance he topples Titurel out of his coffin. In the healing of the wound, Parsifal opens up a new way guided only by love and compassion. That is the Holy Grail.
In order to feel that the production obviously needs rather more than visual references and cues, and fortunately it's a beautiful interpretation in terms of musical and singing performances. Omer Meir Wellber rushes it along a little fast in places, or maybe I've been listening to too many slow versions recently, but there is a deep flow to the performance, completely Wagnerian, and it supports and helps bring out all those undercurrents that Vick hints at in his direction. Catherine Hunold doesn't quite get under the skin of Kundry the way another interpretation might, but she proves to be a fine replacement for Eva Maria Westbroek, providing some lovely lyrical singing in Act II with Parsifal, but she is also able to bring an edge of chilling drama when it's needed.
I've seen Julian Hubbard a number of times - he's a regular in Irish National Opera productions - but I've never seen him take on anything as big as Parsifal. I believe he also was engaged as the understudy before having to take over the main role and he acquits himself exceptionally well, making it look almost too easy, but also essentially human. The other principal roles are all superb. John Relyea is a fine Gurnemanz, his solemn intoning warm and reassuring, his storytelling compelling, his belief unshakable, his joy at the end overwhelming. Tómas Tómasson is wholly enveloped in the painful distraction of Amfortas, and Alexei Tanovitski's Klingsor is one that shows up the weak foundation of his blustering menace in the face of a greater power. Strong singing and good characterisation all around, the Good Friday message of the Palermo Parsifal hits home exactly the way it should.
Links: Teatro Massimo Palermo, ARTE Concert
Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio
Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège - 2014
Paolo Arrivabeni, Mario Martone, Jennifer Wilson, Zoran Todorovich, Franz Hawlata, Cinzia Forte, Yuri Gorodetski, Thomas Gazheli, Laurent Kubla, Xavier Petithan, Alexei Gorbatchev
Medici.tv Internet Streaming - 6th February 2014
Judging from the critical response to a few extravagant recent productions in the UK, the themes and sentiments of Beethoven's only opera has the ability to endure even the most ill-fitting concepts and settings. There's certainly nothing quite as radical attempted in the Opéra Royal de Wallonie's production of Fidelio in Liège. Under the stage direction of Mario Martone, it's a fairly traditional presentation in the main that plays to the strengths of the work. As a consequence, the uninspired and uninspiring Liège production never really engages in a way that brings anything new out of the work either, but Fidelio still endures.
Sergio Tramonti's set designs for the Liège production are fairly basic but at least functional and appropriate for the content and for the purposes of the stage direction. Act I shows a rather grimy prison courtyard with a little hut where the rather dishevelled and dusty warder Rocco and his daughter Marzelline reside. It's a grey and dark place, with a platform of iron scaffolding above and prison gates recessed to the back of the dimly-lit stage. Act II makes more appropriate use of this scaffolding as a means to descend to the deep prison cell where Florestan is being held in chains. Darkness pervades, but as such it's perfectly in keeping with both the literal depiction of the conditions of the 18th century prison near Seville and with the dominant tone of Beethoven's subject.
In Fidelio, and certainly in this production of it, it's definitely a case of painting the picture darker to show that the faint light of human aspirations for truth, justice and liberty can never be entirely extinguished, but rather shine even brighter in what even appear to be the most hopeless of situations. And Fidelio does get pretty bleak. Florestan, a political prisoner, is being held secretly in solitary confinement in the deepest darkest vaults of the prison, never seeing the light of day, being starved to death on the orders of the governor Don Pizarro. Afraid however of Florestan's illegal imprisonment being discovered by the Minister on a sudden inspection visit, Pizarro orders Rocco to murder the prisoner, dig a hole and bury him down there.
It's a very grim subject, but Beethoven's score - worked on laboriously for nine years over several versions and multiple revisions - bears the nobility of the finer qualities of both Florestan and his wife Leonore (in disguise as Rocco's assistant Fidelio, unable to determine even if her husband is still alive, so deep is his light buried), at the same time as it depicts the nature of the darkness that they face. The libretto is littered with references to darkness and light, but Beethoven's score manages to show both sides of the coin at the same time, and not just in the central situation, but also within the smaller-scale drama of the prison warder's daughter Marzelline's love for Fidelio putting paid to her admirer Jaquino's ambitions to marry her.
The Liège production captures the tone of the work reasonably well, but only in the broadest of terms in its distinction between darkness and light. The darkness is well-established in the First Act and the beginning of the Second Act, with only the prisoner's tentative and cautious glimpse of daylight in the chorus of 'O welche Lust' at the end of Act I offering any respite from the gloom. When that brightness cascades onto the set at the arrival of the Minister then, pouring in from the lifting of the walls at the back of the stage, it achieves perfectly the sense of liberation and hope that Leonore's unwavering faith inspires. Broadly, that's fine, but it means that a considerable amount then rests also on the singers to capture the nuance of characterisation that is played out here in the most Manichean of terms.
The singers perform reasonably well, but by no means exceptionally, only really succeeding in matching the level of the production. The nobility of Leonore calls for a strong Wagnerian soprano and Jennifer Wilson meets those requirements with a pure timbre that rings out with courage and dignity. She's not best matched with tenor Zoran Todorovich's Florestan, and doesn't always hold those Mozartian flourishes steady, but it's a good performance. Todorovich isn't quite the heldentenor voice that would be ideal for Florestan and he too has shaky moments, but he makes the right impression. Franz Hawlata's Rocco is solid and clear of diction and there are notable performances from Cinzia Forte as Marzelline and Yuri Gorodetski as Jaquino. Thomas Gazheli's Don Pizarro is sung well but a little over-played with sneers and mannerisms as a caricature baddie.
The Opéra Royal de Wallonie's production of Fidelio - a co-production with the Teatro Regio de Turin - was broadcast live from Liège on the 6th February 2014. At the time of writing it's still available for free viewing from the Medici.tv, in German with French subtitles only.
