Wagner - Tannhäuser (Bayreuth, 2014 - Blu-ray)

Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2014

Axel Kober, Sebastian Baumgarten, Torsten Kerl, Camilla Nylund, Michelle Breedt, Markus Eiche, Kwangchul Youn, Lothar Odinius, Thomas Jesatko, Stefan Heibach, Rainer Zaun, Katja Stuber

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Always controversial in their revisionist approach to Wagner's legacy, the 2014 Tannhäuser is fairly typical of recent Bayreuth productions. The stage set is constructed out of a number of independently created art installations that were never created with Wagner's opera in mind. If it isn't a perfect tailor-made fit then for the ideas and themes in the opera, much less the stated settings, it does however form an interesting dialectic that encourages the viewer to see the work in a new light, and is somewhat successful in how it informs and puts across the all-important musical aspect of the work.

Director Sebastian Baumgarten's idea is to bring together several art installation pieces by the artist and sculptor Joep van Lieshout. These pieces, with names like Alcoholator, Disciplinator and Technocrat, are processes that produce a 'biogas', the whole system forming a kind of working model for the cyclical human and bodily processes that generate life and, by extension, art. Which, if you look at it broadly and in the abstract, is more or less what Tannhäuser is about. It's not enough to simply follow the old stage directions, and reverential literalism is by no means the philosophy of the current Bayreuth administration. They are aware that Wagner's works must be constantly scrutinised in order to remain relevant, but the balance between real significance and pretension is always hard to maintain.

If you want to look at the theme of Tannhäuser on a more simplistic level, it's about the co-dependency of physical and the spiritual. Even then it has to be acknowledged that the work is a little more complicated than that. There is also an outlook on society as a whole, on the role of the artist, and of course it's all tied up in Wagner's own complex and contradictory impulses, political vision and developing philosophical outlook. Baumgarten's Tannhäuser follows a similar path to Hans Neuenfels' laboratory experiment 'rat' Lohengrin for Bayreuth, viewing the work as a model of society, taking in Wagner's perspective and extending it to a more modern outlook. It's not so much trying to update it or make it fit as use it as a means to revisit the work and explore whether it really has something new to inform our view of the world we live in today.

Baumgarten of course doesn't simply just use the installations as a backdrop. There has to be consideration given to how the drama and the music interact with the set design. It's an impressive construction, if initially bewildering, the stage filled with stage hands who operate the machinery, regulating and monitoring the meters that convert the liquids and solids into biogas, cleaning-up the mess it creates. These processes extend way beyond the musical performance, starting while the audience take their seats and continuing through the intervals. There even seems to be a mass for the operators taking place on the stage in-between acts. The audience too are given a place in the interaction of the installation and the performance, with a number of them seated to the sides of the stage.

I'm not sure that the director really manages to draw anything new out of Tannhäuser, but it does encourage anyone who thinks they are familiar with the work to reconsider more deeply what it is about, and question whether those contradictions and inconsistencies within it aren't actually essential to its purpose. It does at least, I find, explore the characters in greater detail, and not just Tannhäuser, but also Venus and Elisabeth and the relationships between them. Wolfram von Eschenbach also comes out of this production with a role that suddenly seems more significant, but it seems to me that as much of the strength of the characterisation here is also down to how it is performed.

Whatever you make of the Bayreuth stage production, musically it's a glorious affair that does open up the work and reveal new qualities. It's not a forceful, driving traditional Wagnerian interpretation of Tannhäuser, but one that finds the true delicacy and poignancy within what is surely the most Romantic of Wagner's works on the misunderstood, suffering, exiled artist as national or social hero. Alex Kober's conducting of the orchestra is outstanding and the chorus are superb, as they really have to be in this particular work. There's not a trace of heavy-handedness, yet all the force and dynamic of the work is there, measured and applied in such a way that it works hand-in-hand with the production.

The singing likewise is never forced. I thought at first that Camilla Nylund was underpowered here as Elisabeth. Knowing what she is capable of, it sounded like she was conserving her voice, but the more gentle delivery and the colour that Nylund is able to apply actually pays dividends with Elisabeth and her nature here. This is also borne out in the performances of Michelle Breedt's Venus, but particularly in Markus Eiche's excellent and impressive Wolfram. The complex character of Tannhäuser is another matter however, and requires a different approach. Torsten Kerl achieves a good balance between the more lyrical side of his character and the Romantic heldentenor, his performance also covering all the playfulness, bawdiness, irreverence and the more serious, spiritual as well as the vainglorious sides of the character.

The Opus Arte Blu-ray release presents all the colour and brightness of the busy Bayreuth stage very well. Spread over two BD50 discs, there is the option to view the musical performance alone or, if you've an hour or so to spare and are interested in the set as an art installation piece, you can view it interspersed with all the extra performance art set-pieces in-between. Audio tracks are PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1, both giving an impressive full uncompressed true HD sound. The interviews on the disc and in the booklet provide much more useful information about the concept. Subtitles on the disc are English, French, German and Korean only.

Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen (Mannheim, 2013 - DVD)

Richard Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen

National Theater Mannheim, 2013

Dan Ettinger, Achim Freyer, Thomas Jesatko, Karsten Mewes, Edna Prochnik, Jürgen Müller, Endrik Wottrich, Heike Wessels, Judith Nėmeth, Uwe Eikötter, Andreas Hört, Sung Ha, Iris Kupke, Manfred Hemm, Thomas Berau, Christoph Stephinger

Arthaus Musik - DVD

As far as modern opera directing goes, there's Regietheater, there's the avant-garde, and there's Achim Freyer. Freyer's vision for opera is unique and distinctive - similar to Robert Wilson in its idiosyncratic traits, often using obscure symbolism, repetitive movements and abstract gestures. Freyer however is by no means a minimalist, applying these techniques to a La Fura dels Baus scale of spectacle. When you set Freyer to work on something like Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen then, the results are not unexpectedly extraordinary and spectacular, but can be difficult to follow. If it's not actually unfathomable, the Mannheim 2013 Ring cycle is at least unlike any other production of Wagner's masterwork you'll see.

The great thing about the Ring as far as Freyer is concerned, and particularly in relation to the opening prologue Das Rheingold, is that you're dealing with mythology, and mythology doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with reality. Myths of course have meaning and significance, and Wagner would certainly have thought so, but that doesn't mean that the mythology has to be presented in purely human terms. Without ever getting completely abstract, Achim Freyer reinvents the Ring as a kind of circus - a Circus Ring with a polar bear and even some live animals - but without ever departing entirely from who the familiar characters are or from the hugely significant situations that are played out across the whole tetralogy.

It's clown imagery that makes the strongest impression in the cycle, but mostly it's just applied to the Nibelung dwarfs, with Siegfried also adopting some of the characteristics of his foster parent Mime. Elsewhere, Freyer conjures up some elaborate costumes and raven-like identities for Wotan and Freia, wolf masks for Sieglinde and Siegmund, few of them looking anything like familiar representations of these characters. All of them do at least relate to the group that they belong to, the Eternals distinct from the Giants, the Wälsung too having their own peculiar 'Wolfling' look and manner of gesture and behaviour, as strange as that might often seem. It's not as strange through as the large childish-drawn heads that the Gibichung wear, but that too suits their naive nature. This is mythology however, not the time of man, so the director should be free indeed to depict these figures in whatever outlandish manner he sees fit.

   
Outlandish, but not entirely without some kind of basis within the poetic account of Wagner's libretto. Freia, for example in Das Rheingold, might look strange with a tree growing out of her head and apples around her bosom, but Freia is the goddess of fertility and does indeed cultivate apples that grant eternal youth and beauty, so the characterisation has 'roots', if you like. Crafty Loge prowls around here (and is frequently seen popping into the scene to keep an eye on things in Die Walküre for some unknown reason) with smoke billowing out of the five cigars he holds in five hands. No, not entirely sure where that image comes from, but it creates a distinct impression. Quite why Fricka has what looks like a black baguette on her head is a mystery, or why each of the Valkyrie have their own object (trumpet, watering can, scissors, hand, coat hanger, shoe, sewing machine - Brünnhilde for more obvious reasons, a raven), but I'm sure there's an explanation for it somewhere.

What you notice however by the time you get to Die Walküre however is the consistency and the rhythm of the stage direction. The symbolism remains consistent, a large white strip of neon (Valhalla? Wotan's staff? Perhaps just symbolically signifying the will and power of the Gods?) hanging above the revolving stage, while mini figures and handpuppets start to feature to represent double imagery (deceit? control?) or sometimes to indicate hierarchy or leitmotif presence. Or who knows really except Achim Freyer? All the actions that take place in Die Walküre are there, but are dream-like, unreal. What you can sense however is the rhythm, the slow flow of events building towards a cataclysmic conclusion. It's not as if there isn't always plenty of activity going on, but it can be difficult to remain engaged when you aren't quite sure what you're expected to be making of it all.

You might expect that to become more difficult in the rather longer drawn-out dramas of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, but even though Freyer's vision just gets even more bizarre and detached from reality as the tetralogy progresses, it coalesces extraordinarily well. In contrast to the darkness of the Prologue and First Day Festival opera, Siegfried is initially a little brighter, but there's little that is familiar with the clinical white setting where a cartoon clown Siegfried, in a yellow wig with a horn of hair and one large red ear, lies strapped in a bed. His wears a funnel for a helmet, his Notung is a plastic 'light sabre' and he hangs out with a polar bear. Götterdämmerung is always a challenge, but it's here where the value of Freyer's vision comes through, the neon staff turning into a ring, the set all twilight lighting and mirrors, creating an eerie tense atmosphere that feeds right through to the singing performances as well. It's an impressive finale.

Aside from what you might make of the directorial idiosyncrasies, the Mannheim Ring fares very well indeed in terms of musical performance and singing. Dan Ettinger's conducting doesn't deliver a powerhouse Ring - or at least that's not how it comes across in the PCM Stereo mix for the DVD - nor one that is particularly lyrical either. It can feel a little cold and mechanical in places but the orchestra play well, impressively sustaining a consistent tone and rhythm right across all four festival days, building in force towards an intense conclusion in Götterdämmerung. Consistency counts for a lot in the Ring, and it's rare that the major opera houses can maintain the same cast right through the extended period that it takes to perform a Ring cycle. There are fewer Wagnerian A-list names among the Mannheim cast, but it helps considerably that the performers are uniformly good and they remain in the same roles throughout (not that you'd notice visually under all the costumes and make-up).

The strength of the Mannheim Ring rests mainly on a very fine Wotan from Thomas Jesatko. The heavy make-up and turban-like head with its single eye don't make things easy for him, and it's hard to establish any kind of recognisable characterisation under Freyer's stiff direction, but Jesatko holds reliably strong and consistent throughout. Edna Prochnik also deserves credit not only for a fine Fricka, but also for taking on the Valkyrie Schwertleite in Die Walküre and Erda in Siegfried, as well as Waltraude and First Norn in Götterdämmerung. Jürgen Müller isn't the most powerful Siegfried I've ever heard, but he is certainly one of the steadiest I've come across in recent years, more than capable for the huge demands of the role and at times even impressive. He also performs well as a bright and lively Loge in the first two parts. Judith Nėmeth's Brünnhilde is good and comes into her own in Götterdämmerung when her contribution is really needed.

You couldn't really find fault with the rest of the cast, all of them contributing to a uniformly well-sung Ring without any significant weak elements, which is not something you can say about many Ring cycles even in the major opera houses. Manfred Hemm's Hunding is authoritative in Die Walküre, and Heike Wessels is also impressive as Sieglinde here. Christoph Stephinger's treacherous Hagen is wonderfully enigmatic, lending much to the successful tone that is established in the concluding part of the Ring.

The Mannheim Der Ring des Nibelungen is released on DVD by Arthaus Musik, but with only German subtitles provided it is apparently only for the home market. The box set contains all four operas in individual cases. The set contains seven DVDs, one for Das Rheingold, two discs for each of the others. The video quality is not quite the High-Definition level you might be used to on Blu-ray, a little grainy and lacking in definition on the darkened stage, but it's clear and free from any troubling encoding issues. It's difficult nonetheless to really capture the scale and colour of Freyer's visual extravaganza on a small screen, but despite having the most complicated stage arrangement, I thought Götterdämmerung looked and sounded the best. The audio tracks are PCM stereo only, but well-mixed to balance the singing and orchestration.

The packaging on the DVD indicates that the encoding is in the European PAL format rather than the more universal NTSC, so the Mannheim Ring might not be suitable for viewing on older televisions in the USA. Should you be inclined however to experience this unique production, the DVDs are not region coded and the libretto of the Ring is freely available on the internet, so don't let the lack of English subtitles put you off.

Wagner - Parsifal

Richard Wagner - Parsifal

Deutsche Oper, Berlin 2012

Donald Runnicles, Philipp Stölzl, Mara Kurotschka, Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester, Albert Pesendorfer, Matti Salminen, Klaus Florian Vogt, Thomas Jesatko, Evelyn Herlitzius, Burkhard Ulrich, Andrew Harris, Kim-Lilian Strebel, Annie Rosen, Paul Kaufmann, Matthew Pena, Hulkar Sabirova, Martina Welschenbach, Rachel Hauge, Hila Fahima, Annie Rosen, Dana Beth Miller

25 October 2012

Director Philipp Stölzl’s approach to the Deutsche Oper’s new 2012/13 production of Parsifal in Berlin is immediately and firmly established by the extraordinary setting for the work’s Overture. On a rocky recreation of Golgotha, Christ hangs from a cross in a meticulously detailed tableau vivant representation of the Crucifixion. Surrounded by onlookers freeze-framed in various states of anguish and despair, with Roman soldiers guarding the area, one significantly (as far as this opera is concerned) with a lance, the figures move in slow motion as Christ dies on the cross during the length of the overture, his side is pierced by the soldier’s spear and the blood that runs from it is caught in the chalice and respectfully coveted by his followers. It’s a powerful way to start a performance of this work, and when you have as beautiful a piece of music as the Overture to Parsifal, why waste it on something less than monumental? Solemn, respectful and dignified, the scene is however also completely relevant to the opera’s Passion play exploration of suffering and redemption through death and rebirth and appropriate in how those concepts are tied up by Wagner into the symbolic images of the Lance and the Holy Grail.

Any performance of Wagner’s remarkable final work should indeed be something of a spiritual experience over the course of its four and a half hour length, but there was a sense that Philipp Stölzl’s production here (co-directed by Mara Kurotschka) was perhaps a little too solemn and reverential - or perhaps somewhat too grandiose - to really touch on the transcendental elements of the work. If there’s a touch of kitsch to the production - something characteristic of this director - it’s appropriate to one where the iconography and glorification of Christ’s passion adheres to a certain Catholic tradition. You don’t need to look too far beyond the condition of Amfortas - the Knight of the Holy Grail in agony from a perpetual wound caused by the lance, his suffering deepened by each display of the Holy Grail that gives sustenance and renewed vigour to its followers - to recognise that it’s the question of suffering that is central to the work in how it can be a redemptive force. There was certainly plenty of pain on display in the Deutsche Oper’s new production - the opera house celebrating its 100th anniversary - but little sense of it leading to any kind of transcendental enlightenment.

Despite the prettification of the visuals, every ounce of the earth-shattering, curtain-tearing pain depicted in Christ’s Crucifixion and the despair in the faces of his followers (most notably in one Mary Magdalene/Kundry figure at the margins) is there in the opening scene and retained to be built upon by the events recounted by Gurnemanz and enacted in Parsifal’s journey to recover the Holy Spear from the hands of Klingsor. Stölzl recognises that all that suffering shown in the opening scene is going to be caught up in the musical themes established by Wagner in the Overture, and it consequently becomes impossible to disassociate the suffering of Christ himself every time those leitmotifs swirl and swell throughout the remainder of the work. And just in case the musical expression isn’t powerful enough (and under the baton of Donald Runnicles it often was, even if lacked any real character or vision), the director also uses every visual element to emphasise and add to the near overwhelming display of agony and despair.

That can be as simple as the Monsalvat set design sharing many of the rocky structures and contours of the opening Golgotha scene, but the subsequent scenes also reflect the opening, being mostly static in arrangement, each scene like a 3-dimensional engraving of one of the Stations of the Cross, a single image frieze set in slow motion movement. The set designs by Conrad Moritz Reinhardt and Stölzl moreover allow every element of the work to be examined in detail and every character to be explored for their own personal suffering that contributes to the collective pain. Even every element of the backstory narrated at length by Gurnemanz is depicted visually in mini scenes, as beautifully arranged and brutal as a Caravaggio painting, that are played out in the background on the tops of rocky outcrops. This production of Parsifal is as visually striking as previous Stölzl productions I’ve seen (Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini and most notably his production of Wagner’s Rienzi, also for the Deutsche Oper), beautifully arranged, lit and coloured, more than a little kitsch but - within its own designs - it’s also much more respectfully faithful here to the tone of the work in question.

It’s actually perhaps a little too literal and respectful for a work that should also have a life in a spiritual dimension. (That might sound like a pretentious statement for any other work, but not for this one). There’s no doubt that this production - musically as well as visually and conceptually - is completely faithful to the spirit of the work, but it never seems to get beyond it to illuminate or elevate the underlying meaning. That’s evidently a tall order for a work that is wrapped up in Wagner’s complex and contradictory ideas and philosophies, but while Stölzl’s production is not without its own personal touches in its examination of these concepts, they don’t really amount to much and don’t resolve into any kind of satisfactory conclusion. The confusion is best exemplified within the role of Amfortas - the Christ figure of the work - who is not healed by the lance at the end here, but allowed to escape from his pain through death at its touch. This perhaps relates to the very specific Good Friday notions of death and rebirth in a work that the composer described as a Bühnenweihfestspiel - “A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage” - but quite where the necessary rebirth/transcendence is supposed to come from is less than clear. There is a suggestion however that the key to this interpretation could lie within the figure of Kundry.

More so than Parsifal or Amfortas, or even Gurnemanz, the focus in this production is very much on that contradictory element of Kundry, whose role is one of the ambiguities that the work principally revolves around - the saint and the sinner, the serpent and the agent of salvation. In this production she’s there at the crucifixion in the guise of Mary Magdalene, and is therefore the single element of continuity (other than the Grail and the Lance) that runs through the whole work, appearing in Gurnemanz’s backstory, being instrumental in bringing about Parsifal’s self-enlightenment, and in the end recognising her role to serve the new protector of the Grail. Here however, in the very final scene of the production, she seems to become terrified of the prospect of the worship and power that this inspires in Parsifal and the Grail’s followers, and where such Christian fervour might lead - a reference perhaps to future religious conflicts or perhaps, since it now seems almost obligatory to acknowledge in a Wagner opera, a premonitory vision of the rise of Nazism. As depicted by Evelyn Herlitzius in the role, Kundry remains a (female) figure of considerable interest and ambiguity, but quite how it all ties together must - perhaps necessarily considering the nature of the work - remain a mystery.

If the work never comes together musically or conceptually in a way that entirely lives up to the proposal put forward in the audacious opening scene, it’s through no fault of the singing performances. Now 67, Matti Salminen was simply superb, fulfilling everything that is required of a Gurnemanz, his deep, beautifully weighted sonorous tones providing the solid basis and solemn gravity that anchors the work in the real world while simultaneously hinting at timeless mysteries. One would think that Klaus Florian Vogt’s light lyrical tenor voice would not be as well suited to the Heldentenor role of Parsifal as it is to his angelic Lohengrin (even though the two characters are mythologically related), but yet again he brings another vocal dimension to a familiar role, demonstrating a capability of pulling those deeper resonant chest sounds out where necessary - such as in his cry of ‘Amfortas!’ at the recognition scene of the meaning of pain, suffering and love - and filling them with an expressive lightness and sensitivity. Dramatically however and in expression of his character, he was given little to work with by the director. Evelyn Herlitzius on the other hand had a rather more substantial personality as this production’s Kundry and rose to the challenge exceptionally well, emoting and projecting the sentiments of the work through some fine singing. Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester (Amfortas), Albert Pesendorfer (Titurel) and Thomas Jesatko (Klingsor) were more than adequate if they didn’t make quite as much of an impression as the principal roles, but there was also some lovely singing from the three Flowermaidens.