Rossini - La donna del lago (Buxton, 2022)

Giacomo Rossini - La donna del lago

Buxton International Festival, 2022

Giulio Cilona, Jacopo Spirei, Máire Flavin, Catherine Carby, Nico Darmanin, David Ireland, John Irvin, Fiona Finsbury, Robert Lewis, William Searle

Buxton Opera House - 17th July 2022

La donna del lago is an irresistible Rossini opera; filled with stirring melodies and rousing choruses, it's no wonder that it's one of the lesser-known Rossini opera to get revived more regularly. The problem with this particular opera - and it has to be said a lot of early Rossini operas - is that it largely resists any attempts at modernisation. The Buxton International Festival production, as is often the case when trying to revive older and more problematic works like this, settles for a kind of half-way house between retaining fidelity to the original but adding a little modernisation in how the work is framed.

That was indeed the approach taken to the last production I saw of this opera directed by John Fulljames at the Royal Opera House in 2013. It took the approach of viewing it as an historical artefact, a museum piece preserved in amber more or less, a fantastic relic of the past that can be brought out, polished up and admired for its craft. There is a similar approach taken here in Buxton, where the set is not by a lake in the Scottish Highlands but on the site of some ancient ruin that is being excavated by archeologists. The archeologist in charge of the dig finds an object, a model of a boat, and this seems to set off her imagination at the story that might lie behind it, becoming a minor character in the drama - Albina - an observer to what takes place when King James returns to Scotland incognito and encounters Elena, 'the lady of the lake'.

Based on what we see here, I would have my doubts about the lead archeologist's qualifications, but then Rossini's librettist Andrea Leone Tottola wasn't too concerned about historical accuracy of the era of King James V. Jacopo Spirei, the director for the Buxton production, doesn't see any value either in making this an accurate reflection of the Scottish highlands in the 16th century, and rather than making it contemporary, even seems to push it back much further. There are no kilts, but rather the robes worn look like something from antiquity or Roman times that you would expect to see in Semiramide, Mosè in Egitto or Aureliano in Palmira.

It doesn't really matter, and in fact it makes sense to play it out as a timeless romantic fantasy, as essentially that's what Rossini's opera does with Walter Scott's epic poem. Accepting it on those terms is easy and the first half of the Buxton production played out well enough, but without there being anything significant in the way of a plot in this opera, or any real input provided to make it connect meaningfully with a contemporary audience, it felt like there was something missing. I'm not sure exactly what was missing - there still wasn't anything to make you really understand or care about what the characters were going through - but there were a few subtle changes applied in the second half of the performance after the interval that seemed to contribute it.

For one thing, the framing device changed in the second act. The foreground of the excavation site remained the same but the background changed, the dig now relocated intact to a museum where the archeologist is being congratulated on her discovery and successful transfer to the museum. With the archeologist slipping between present and past as Albina, it's evidently a way of bringing the past into the present and reconnecting with it, but there is maybe even a little more than that. As Elena arrives at the court of King James, the king and his retinue in black and silver look more futuristic, so in a way it's also trying to look beyond the narrative. It doesn't seem like much, but it did seem to make a difference.

What really made the difference in Act II is how the music and performances stepped up a level. Rossini is primarily responsible for that of course with his marvellous score, but it needs a suitable orchestral drive and urgency and that was in place in Giulio Cilona's conducting of the Northern Chamber Orchestra. The singing too helped push this one convincingly over the line. Initially the strongest performances came from John Irvin as Rodrigo and Nico Darmanin as Uberto/Giacomo (King James), each of the tenors hitting those high Cs squarely, while David Ireland gave an authoritative delivery as Elena's father Duglas. Máire Flavin was excellent as Elena, weaker on recitative but capable of fiery delivery. She really came into her own however in the final act where, in combination with Rossini's finales and the orchestral drive, she really made an impact.

La donna del lago still remains a curiosity despite Spirei's efforts and the fine singing. Composed in 1819, the opera retains some elements of opera seria, most notably in the self-absorbed arias - Malcom's Act I aria in particular - and in the notion of a divisive ruler who eventually sees the error of his ways and offers clemency to all, reuniting lovers, reconciling children with parents. but you can already see some of the developments that would lead to early Verdi. That can even be a reading of the work, taking the past and incorporating it into the present to bring about change, as Verdi would similarly deal with subjects of conflict between parents and children, between love and duty, in his own way. 

Another reading that seems to be applied here is where Elena assumes some measure of power, walking up to the throne at the conclusion, gaining power over her own decisions if not exactly overthrowing the King of Scotland. It's not something that is obvious or made explicit in the opera, but it does have the kind of impact that gives it a little more purpose in the absence of any kind of convincing plot. It wasn't anything revelatory and didn't have any great ideas about how to present a work stepped in old-fashioned 19th century romantic sentiments and operatic delivery, but the Buxton Festival production nonetheless made a convincing case that La donna del lago as an opera still worth revisiting.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Madrid, 2022)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2022

Gustavo Gimeno,Calixto Bieito, Ausrine Stundyte, Leigh Melrose, Dmitry Golovnin, Agnieszka Rehlis, Mika Kares, Nino Surguladze, Dmitry Ulyanov, Josep Fadò, Gerardo Bullón, Ernst Alisch, David Lagares, Estibaliz Martyn, Anna Gomà

ARTE Concert - April 2022

Based on a Symbolist work by Valery Bryusov with autobiographical experiences that were shared to some extent by the composer, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel is one of the most impressive and original works of opera I've come across. Musically and thematically it is quite unlike anything else in opera and each new production - although they aren't that common - always suggests new ways of looking at it. There have been some interesting perspectives taken on the work in recent years in Munich, Aix and Rome, but the idea of seeing what a director like Calixto Bieito can make of it is always going to be an intriguing proposition. It turns out that the Madrid production of The Fiery Angel doesn't seem to have a whole lot to say that is new, but the opera nonetheless remains fascinating, particularly with Ausrine Stundyte again taking on the mesmerising role of Renata. 

Sure, in some respects you can see Renata as a typical opera heroine abused and mistreated and misunderstood by the men in her life, her behaviour out of step with society around her, but in the case of Renata, there is indeed quite a bit to misunderstand. Not that her state of mind is any excuse for the abuse she endures or indeed the exploitation of her vulnerability, but fundamentally does seem to be the rationale for the irrational here. Because for whatever reason (there are hints and suggestions but nothing is made explicit), Renata is indeed not functioning on a rational level. Whether a victim of childhood abuse or suffering from schizophrenia, she has clearly been scarred by her childhood experiences, experiencing visions of a celestial being appearing in her bedroom, a fiery angel who becomes intimate with her.

This unfortunately sets her up to become a victim to be further exploited by the men she meets. She lets herself be taken in by Count Heinrich, who she believes is the angel Madiel in a corporeal form, and his eventual rejection only deepens her trauma. Even the noble knight, Ruprecht who comes to her aid in her distress, sees a vulnerable woman he can exploit sexually. His behaviours and actions are suspect, but when he is rejected he does at least try to consider his better nature and help, although it seems to be primarily because he is still fascinated by this extraordinary woman. With his assistance, Renata is exploited even further by charlatans and astrologers, as she tries to find a way to Madiel through occultism and mysticism. 

On one level then it is a familiar situation of a woman being exploited and shunned by a conformist society, leading her to seek answers elsewhere, but The Fiery Angel is also a work that seeks to explore the far reaches and complexities of human experience, Renata's journey being one to get in touch with a spiritual dimension or existence of life outside of the common experience. She has a sense of having touched on forbidden knowledge and seeks to press it further. For Ruprecht too, there is even a fascination for the mystery of a woman that Renata represents. She stirs up a riot of feelings that involve lust, compassion, fear, jealousy and possessiveness. Combined, The Fiery Angel is an exploration of human dualism, what it means to be human, a material physical being with a spiritual mind, mortal creatures with aspirations of an eternal afterlife. On an everyday level grappling with this dualism extends to male and female divisions, base instincts and a higher purpose, purity and corruption, subjective and objective realities.

In other productions by Mariusz Treliński at Aix-en-Provence and Emma Dante in Rome, the stage directors have sought ways to bring the otherworldly level of the opera expressed in the music to the fore, whereas Barrie Kosky's Munich production highlighted the comic absurdity. Calixto Bieito takes a surprisingly much more down to earth approach, seeing the opera very much as an opening into the mind of a woman rejected for not conforming to the expectations of society. It's even set (restricted I feel) in a specific period, the 1950s, before a more general liberalisation and a sexual permissive society. Initially we see Renata seeking mystery in the spinning of a bicycle wheel, creating patterns, the bicycle perhaps alluding to a childhood trauma. The set meanwhile consists of a block of compartments that, as occasional projections of Ausrine Stundyte as Renata illustrate, are representative of the idea that we are seeing into her mind.

Those rooms or compartments are mostly bare empty rooms, ready to be filled with horrors, each in their own little world, none of them connecting up to form any coherent view of reality. Significantly, perhaps rejecting any idea of a spiritual realm beyond physical reality, the few rooms that are decorated, the only lights in the darkness, are related to Agrippa von Nettesheim who in this version is less of a sorcerer than a physician, a man of science who is aware that we are still far from having all the answers. Her childhood bedroom, the source of her trauma, is also shown in all its horror. With an older man appearing, there is the suggestion of abuse by her father, who she looks up to. She sees Heinrich, an older man, as a substitute for her father, but inevitably that is a terrible mistake that only deepens her trauma. The tavern scene with Faust and Mephisopheles pushes Renata to her limits, and is quite disturbing in its own way. As she disturbs the community of nuns in Act 5, there are correspondences with Penderecki's opera Die Teufel von Loudun, which also featured Ausrine Stundyte in a recent Munich production.

Prokofiev, in a work long laboured over that he never saw performed in his own lifetime, strives to find similar expression in the music for the tangible and intangible, and it truly is a remarkable endeavour. The music is powerful and dynamic, sweeping between sensual and disorientating, evoking objective and subjective realities. I think its complexities came across better in the Rome production, but that might just be that the recording benefitted from superb High Resolution sound mix on the Blu-ray presentation. Here, conducted by Gustavo Gimeno, the detail isn't all there, nor the same dynamic shifts of tempo and volume.

Where the opera really comes to life however here in this Madrid production is in the singing performances. Once again - a revelation in the same role in Aix-en-Provence - we have a marvellous performance by Ausrine Stundyte. It's a role that has considerable vocal challenges but there are dramatic challenges too that require expression beyond the external, a requirement for Renata to be possessed of a deep and mysterious inner life. Bieito makes it physically challenging too and Stundyte is again impressive. Leigh Melrose is also excellent, his Ruprecht grappling with things beyond his comprehension and his own limited knowledge and experience. He brings that out in a similarly committed physical performance. 

The origins of the work and its Symbolist trappings leave a lot of room for analysis in The Fiery Angel, but it seems like the controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito uncharacteristically seeks to demystify the work and restrict its possibilities. In his hands it does indeed boil down to familiar opera themes of a woman with unconventional individual behaviours being shunned by a closed society, moulded to conform and eventually destroyed by it. Prokofiev music suggests a wider context, but in that dialectic between the score and stage representation, the opera still works and weaves its fascination. Principally of course its real human level is expressed by the singers, and with prior experience of these roles, Stundyte and Melrose are thoroughly convincing.

Links: Teatro Real, ARTE Concert

Penderecki - Die Teufel von Loudun (Munich, 2022)

Krzysztof Penderecki - Die Teufel von Loudun

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2022

Vladimir Jurowski, Simon Stone, Ausrine Stundyte, Ursula Hesse von den Steinen, Nadezhda Gulitskaya, Lindsay Ammann, Danae Kontora, Nadezhda Karyazina, Jordan Shanahan, Robert Dölle, Martin Winkler, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Andrew Harris, Ulrich Reß, Kevin Conners, Jochen Kupfer, Thiemo Strutzenberger, Barbara Horvath, Sean Michael Plumb, Martin Snell, Christian Rieger, Steffen Recks

Staatsoper.TV - 27th June 2022

The Bavarian State Opera are not afraid to take in new and challenging works, and while not exactly new - it was premiered in 1969 - Penderecki's Die Teufel von Loudun is being performed in Munich for the first time in 2022 and it is an ambitious work to open their Summer Opera Festival. It's not just that Penderecki's music is modern and uses some unconventional instruments, but the subject matter still has the potential to cause shock and outrage in some quarters. Directing the opera at Munich, Simon Stone attempts to explore the work and its subject a little more deeply than that, but it doesn't quite have the impact you might have expected.

The opera itself caused a certain amount of disapproval when it was first performed, but the controversy around the subject goes back much further than that. Based on a famous event of mass hysteria in a Ursuline monastery in the 17th century where a number of nuns claimed to be possessed by demons, the story has been written about and filmed many times, celebrated for its potential to cause outrage. The basis of most modern adaptations is Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun (1952), including the play by John Whiting, and it's the latter that provides the dramatic template that is the basis for Penderecki's opera.

More than just being about mass hysteria, the subject gives rise to a number of human and socio-political points of interest, on the abuse of power, on religion, the oppression of women, female repression and expression; all topics that, not so surprisingly, continue to be topical and can be related to many present day issues and scandals. And since it's Australian-Swiss director Simon Stone who is directing for Munich, you can imagine that it will not be set in the 17th century but will have a contemporary setting. Essentially however Stone doesn't take revisionism much further than modern dress, just to prevent the viewer from thinking that this is a historical event that has no relevance to the present. Other than that however, the work and its themes speak out powerfully on their own terms.

It's really not such an outrageous idea to imagine how a closed group of people or a closed inward-looking society, dissatisfied with their situation, repressed from having expression of normal human activities that others are able to enjoy, might find themselves subject to manipulation resulting in mass delusion. It certainly appears to be that kind of situation exploited by Cardinal Richelieu in France in the 17th century, wanting to break down the walls of Loudun as a sign of being more open to Protestantism, and he uses the breaking down of a liberal-minded man, the womanising priest Grandier who poses a threat to his sense of order. Huxley would have seen parallels to this in his time just as Penderecki would have recognised lving in Poland in the 1930s, and you don't need to be reminded where it is applicable today.

There are many other levels that can be explored, and from a modern perspective - and again an issue that remains topical and controversial - it's interesting that the battleground that this battle is fought over is that of a woman's body. The young women of Loudun are preyed on to some extend by Grandier, and they are urged to claim demonic possession by the priest's enemies. The nun Jeanne and the other nuns, victims of repressive behaviour and thus highly suggestible, who have no control over how their situation is exploited. The use of modern dress might help make such connections without having to make it explicit and without having to resort to exploitative or sensationalist imagery, but nonetheless I don't think that Stone's production is entirely successful. The again, I'm not sure it's all down to the direction.

Where Stone is usually strong is in working with his set designer, Bob Cousins, to devise a set that is adaptable and fluid, keeping the drama moving while holding the inherent intensity of a work. This set however doesn't prove to be very attractive or interesting, being just a large revolving block with a number of functional openings and staircases. I'm not convinced however that Penderecki gets to the heart of the situation either in the libretto or the score. The essential ideas and themes I mentioned earlier are evident, but the libretto is a little too wordy and explanatory, the music often reduced to cinematic cues. The lip-syned demonically possessed voices is a quite creepy effect, but you get a sense that it should be far more chilling and disturbing than this. It feels more academically laid out than dramatically engaging.

Where Stone is also traditionally good is getting into the complex underlying psychology and making it relatable. There is a lot to get into here, and we certainly get strong performances under the musical direction of Vladimir Jurowski, a champion for the work. Ausrine Stundyte in particular is excellent as Jeanne, and is typically superb in roles like this, but it still feels like there is something missing. Whether it's in the disconnect between the music, the drama, the themes, the set design or the performances, in some operas it is critical that they all come together. That's down to the director to ensure that happens, but for whatever reason, the elements just don't seem to blend in a way that really makes the necessary impact.

I don't think the replacement of an indisposed Wolfgang Koch by an actor had any real bearing on that, but it probably didn't help. Robert Dölle from the Ensemble of the Residence Theater gave a strong dramatic performance with a Sprechstimme delivery of the recitative lines, but the singing part of the role had to be taken off-stage by Jordan Shanahan. Certainly the fate of Grandier as depicted in the opera and on stage is truly horrific, and that impact was not lost. Die Teufel von Loudun is definitely an opera that is worth bringing back and looking at it again in the filmed version of the opera with Tatjana Troyanos confirms its worth, but it doesn't really make the same impression here in the 2022 Munich Festival premiere.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Stockhausen - Dienstag aus Licht (Paris, 2020)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Dienstag aus Licht

Le Balcon - Paris, 2020

Maxime Pascal, Richard Wilberforce, Damien Bigourdan, Nieto, Élise Chauvin, Léa Trommenschlager, Hubert Mayer, Damien Pass, Henri Deléger, Mathieu Adam, Sarah Kim

Philharmonie Live streaming, 24th October 2020

There is of course never anything conventional about Stockhausen's approach to music and, from what we've been able to see so far of this new cycle of his epic 7-day, almost 30 hour-long opera series Licht, undertaken over the last few years by Le Balcon (Donnerstag aus Licht, Samstag aus Licht), each section is not short of ideas and challenges. It goes without saying that this an ambitious work of opera like no other and the challenges are undoubtedly for an opera company to rise to the scale of Stockhausen's vision, the challenges of the singing and music and the often near-impossible stage directions. Performed in Paris in October 2020, the unique challenges of presenting Dienstag aus Licht ('Tuesday from Light'), were doubtlessly compounded it being performed during the height of the initial waves of the Covid pandemic, but Maxime Pascal, Le Balcon, director Damien Bigourdan and visual artist Nieto still managed to do full justice to this section of Stockhausen's operatic masterwork. 

First performed in Leipzig in 1993, Dienstag aus Licht indeed opens with one of Stockhausen's unconventional techniques inevitably rarely seen in opera, the Dienstags-Gruss (Tuesday’s Greeting) requiring not just one but two conductors to handle the compositional challenges of the score. I've seen it used since in Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, but of course Stockhausen has been here before in 1957 with his piece Gruppen for three orchestras with three conductors. Here it has particular relevance and necessity as the opening of Dienstag, since like much of the themes of the entire Licht cycle as a whole, it involves the eternal battle between the opposing forces of good and evil, with Michael on one side and Lucifer on the other.

And that is how they appear on the stage of the Philharmonie de Paris during the prelude of Tuesday's Greeting, the two pitched against each other in yet another struggle for dominance, light seeking to overcome darkness. On one side Michael's trumpets and celestial chorus are bathed in blue light, sending out blasts of goodness against the red lit deeper intoning of Lucifer's trumpets rejecting God, with voices whispering fragments of words and clicks that are spat out at the other side. Maxime Pascal conducting Lucifer's forces, Richard Wilberforce conducting Michael's separately across each other, follow Stockhausen's detailed directions with precision. A figure appears in the midst of this battle, appealing for calm; Eve, the third person in the triumvirate that Licht revolves around.

In Act I Michael and Lucifer appear on the stage, Lucifer challenging Michael to run the Jahreslauf, the Course of the Year. Visually this is presented as four walking-dancing-rotating-spinning figures moving at different speeds, representing time; one for the millennium, one for the century, one for the decade, and one for the year. Lucifer uses temptations to stop time, and Michael has to start it again using 'incentives'. One of those mentioned in the stage directions is a monkey in the sports car. We didn't quite get that, but there was nonetheless an effective best endeavour for all the situations. When the runners eventually succeed in making it to the year 2020, Lucifer accepts Michael as the winner, but he has another more difficult challenge to offer in the second Act.

Again, a ritualistic aspect is evident in the work, one that has been described by Stockhausen in detail in his directions, right down to the number of tongue clicks and trills uttered by the performers. With an orchestral accompaniment that consists of drums and percussion, flutes, a guitar, a harpsichord, three harmoniums and soprano saxophones, it sometimes feel like we have entered David Lynch's Black Lodge here, some disturbing alternate reality subject to unfamilar laws. If it doesn't feel quite as combative and awe-inspiring as the situations in some of the others days, Act I is definitely unique in its own way and a fascinating part of the whole. But there is a darker side to come.

The possibilities offered by CGI allows Stockhausen's vision for the second part of the opera 'Act II - Invasion - Explosion with Farewell' to be realised more effectively than anyone could ever have imagined, bringing the battlefield out into the auditorium. Fighter planes picked out in spotlights are shot down by laser-guided weapons to crash, burn and smolder on a vast wall of rock projected on the stage. One pilot is plucked from the wreckage by an enormous 3-D hand that appears out of an opening in the cliff face. All the while a synthetic sound drone underpins the menace, the whole thing having the look and feel of the opening of a Pink Floyd concert. The explosion that subsequently takes place as Lucifer and Michael take to the stage with their army of trombones and trumpets truly lives up to the billing, threatening chaos.

The battle eventually seems to collapse under its own weight, leaving a strange absence and air of expectation. This is filled with the arrival of the Synthi-Fou, who brings the opera to a conclusion in an orgy of planes crashing in a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour and light, while he/she plays out a barrage of synthesiser sounds. An ominous choral backing that seems to present a blend of haunting doom and celestial wonder vocalises the chaos that has been left behind. You can truly say - as with every other part of Stockhausen's Licht that Le Balcon have presented thus far - that you have never seen or heard anything quite like Dienstag aus Licht. It also lives up to the ambition of Stockhausen to take opera into another realm beyond music, singing and drama, into a sensory, participatory experience.

It would be ridiculous to review or rate this opera performance in a traditional manner. Stockhausen doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation in Licht, but if you are looking for as authentic an experience of this extraordinary work - rarely performed for obvious reasons - you can be sure that Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon's production lives up to the extraordinarily challenging standards of music and theatricality that Stockhausen's expansive epic presents. Stockhausen's work invites disciples who like to see his work treated reverentially, and Le Balcon do that here by performing the work with purpose and complete commitment. As they have done with previous sections Donnerstag and Samstag, and as they will no doubt do with the remaining four.

The next section of Licht to be tackled in this complete cycle by Le Balcon is Freitag aus Licht at Lille and Paris in November 2022. Having only seen Donnerstag aus Licht performed live, I hope I get the opportunity to see that or one or two of the remaining sections, and if they manage to keep up this standard of presentation, this cycle will undoubtedly be considered be one of the operatic achievements of the decade.

Links: Le Balcon - Licht, Philharmonie Live

Strauss - Salome (Helsinki, 2022)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Finnish National Opera, Helsinki - 2022

Heikki Tuuli, Christof Loy, Vida Miknevičiūtė, Mihails Culpajevs, Nikolai Schukoff, Karin Lovelius, Andrew Foster-Williams, Elli Vallinoja

ARTE Concert - April 2022

There's something very familiar about the look and feel of this staging of Salome at Helsinki, which is not a surprise as it's a case of the typical Christof Loy production of performers in formal dress in a minimal classical white room look that he has been doing now for decades. There can be variations on the theme, sometimes it's more minimal than others, sometimes Loy can veer off and do something a little more elaborate. Here, it's the very minimal approach. Not quite the almost concert performance semi-staging look of Theodora, a little closer to the formal tuxedos and bow ties of Le nozze di Figaro For Salome? You have to ask why.

Well, I've seen enough Christof Loy productions to have made enough excuses for that kind of thing, not that the end results need any justification. One argument you can make is that without the more typical exoticism of period costumes it allows the audience to focus intently on the intense drama, and they don't come much more intense than Strauss's Salome. The Tetrarch's palace here is a curved white room with two wide pillars on either side, a single brown leather chair and a large rock at the centre of the room. The elegance of the palace is contrasted not with the unkempt appearance of a raving prophet in a cistern as much as one wearing nothing at all. It makes a change from Salome divesting herself seven skimpy veils, but unfortunately it's poor Andrew Foster-Williams (Euryanthe) who is again called upon to bare all and leave the audience not knowing where to look.

If the intention is to bring back a little of the shock value of the source material and the extraordinary interpretation of the psychological Symbolist underpinning of it in Strauss's score, well it's clearly not necessary. This is one work that is still bold, powerful and transgressive and needs little - if anything - in the way of added controversy. Jochanaan's imprecations against Herodias are usually bellowed from off-stage, so it's not even necessary to bring him onto the stage as soon as Loy does. Again you can look at this as being more directly confrontational, for the impression his chaste nakedness makes on Salome who only knows the decadent court of Herod. It certainly gives you an opportunity to think about it in this context.

Where Loy is usually more successful is in how he manages through his technique as a director to bring acting and conviction to the fore. In a Symbolist work where naturalism is not required, the stylised responses here are perfectly in keeping and suited to a dramatic art form that specialises in enhanced reality. This is much more effective when Salome attempts to remove her clothing - long before the Dance of the Seven Veils - her wantonness made explicit to a score of courtiers, who are at first angry at her and then stirred up to try to physically assault her. This spirals into a frenzy of motion in perfect concord with Strauss's score. 

The actual Dance of the Seven Veils is - by way of contrast  - obviously undercut. Instead of traditional eroticism it becomes an exercise in flirtation; a three-day exercise in power and control between Herod, Salome and Jochanaan. Inevitably it similarly draws the testosterone-charged courtiers circle around, creating a kind of dream sequence where even Narraboth is brought back to life. Herod claims his prize, thinking he is victor, but it's Salome who believes she is the one with the power now to fulfil her own desires.

Despite the liberties taken there is no doubt that Loy does successfully tap into the dangerous erotic and taboo undercurrents of Salome in a quite powerful way. He takes on a big challenge by not providing the traditional shock of a demented princess writhing in the gore of a decapitated head, choosing instead to give her a fully formally dressed Jochanaan. If it's about the depth of forbidden desires, this is another way to emphasise how the power of her desires is matched by the power of her madness, her delusion as a damaged victim perhaps of sexual abuse. It's all expressed anyway in the singing and the score and Vida Miknevičiūtė, this production's Salome, is just superb.

There is no question that Loy puts Salome firmly at the centre of this production; everything literally revolves around her desires and corrupted upbringing, a creature that has inherited the dark ambition of her mother and the avarice for power of her stepfather. The singing however is just as fine from Nikolai Schukoff as Herod and Karin Lovelius as Herodias. I'm not convinced that Andrew Foster-Williams presents the ideal image of an object of dark desire, or at least, not as Loy chooses to present him here. The contrast that Loy perhaps strives to express between female desire and the male gaze is not really established. I would venture to say however that Loy is perhaps working to a bigger picture of the relations between men, women and desire; some of his other more recent productions (Euryanthe, Così fan tutte, Francesca da Rimini, Das Wunder der Heliane) all present different views of the same idea.

Musically this sounded good on the streamed broadcast, but without the benefit of live performance or full uncompressed sound, it's unfair to judge. It's clear enough however that this is still one of the most remarkable scores ever written and with Heikki Tuuli conducting the orchestra of the Finnish National Opera, its force was fully felt. That's where the real power of Salome lies, and often the best a director can do is not to get in the way of that. Loy's stage production might not provide the typical reference points, but he does nonetheless draw out terrific performances that show that this opera is much more than a biblical story, is still relevant to our experience of today and still has the ability to shock and amaze.

Links: Finnish National Opera, ARTE Concert

Heusinger - Die Zeitreisemaschine (Detmold, 2022)

Detlef Heusinger - Die Zeitreisemaschine

Landestheater Detmold, 2022

Lutz Rademacher, Detlef Heusinger, Anton Grass, Louise Heckel, Emily Dorn, Theodore Browne, Stefan Stoll, Irina Meierding 

Edition Gravis - DVD 

A joint commission between the Landestheater Detmold and the Bregenz Festival, Die Zeitreisemaschine ('The Time Travel Machine') by Detlef Heusinger is subtitled 'A Family Opera', and it lives up to that title not just by being an opera for the family, but also one that in some respects is about family. In any family there are generational differences and one area where those differences are more starkly brought into focus is through musical tastes. Who hasn't looked back nostalgically to the old days in the firm belief that quality of music and music performances were much better than they are today?

The grandfather in Heusinger's new opera is adamant about that point, and he makes it clear to his grandson Felix right from the outset of Die Zeitreisemaschine. And you know what? It just so happens that Felix and his sister Frida have just come across a time machine, so why not put this theory to the test and go back and see if things were really much better in the good old days.

The children end up in 1840's Paris in the apartment of Gioachino Rossini, who has retired prematurely from composing opera and now spends his days in bed. Unwell, eating a lot, Rossini is no longer interested in the hard work of being a composer in his present day, and is unwilling even to leave his room to travel to see a new production of Guillaume Tell. Unsurprisingly, even Rossini looks back on the good old days when life was more simple. Those modern trains are too frightening - it was much better and safer when they used horses and carriages.

Of course, whether things are better now or were better in the past can't be proved empirically, but since we are dealing with the subject in the context of an opera, one would expect that it might be a little easier to judge whether music was better in the past than it is in the present. Putting aside the children's preference for Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, we at least we have the advantage of being able to directly compare Heusinger compositional skills with Rossini, but I'm not even sure that this proves anything. Some I'm sure might find the comparison easier to determine, but all we can say for sure is that axiomatically Rossini was of his time and Heusinger is of his time.

What we can say, and one advantage we have in the present, is that we have the past to look back on. Rossini undoubtedly would have considered the music of Mozart being better than anything composed in the present day, and few would argue with that. So in a way we do possess a time-travel machine. Rossini would also have been influenced by his past, so really, it's all about how well we build on what has come before. As the current director of the SWR Experimental Studio, Detlef Heusinger has the whole history of music (up to now) at his fingertips and shows in Die Zeitreisemaschine that he can work creatively with the knowledge and musical tools at his disposal.

Conducted by Lutz Rademacher, Heusinger's chamber-sized orchestra for this opera is therefore able to mix traditional instruments more modern instruments and techniques, using an electric guitar, electronic keyboards and even a theremin. The wholly accessible musical arrangements of the opera itself play with the range of options available, using recitative, aria and choral arrangements to blend into a rich texture that is of its time and uses it to reflect the nature of the subject matter.

Would Rossini have taken advantage of a theremin and electric guitar if there were at his disposal? Clearly he didn't need to, and we can still hear that Guillaume Tell is no worse off for these instruments not being available to him. Can we say that having to much choice and too much history of music at our disposal places us in the present day at an advantage, or is it a disadvantage? Heusinger just has to be more selective in the choices he makes, but the challenge to progress music forward and not backward is the same that Rossini would have faced with the legacy of Mozart.

It's an interesting choice to use Rossini as a way of reflecting and contrasting common attitudes to the past versus the present. Undoubtedly Rossini must surely have felt the same as any composer faced with the legacy of the illustrious musical history that came before him. Rossini's reasons for retiring early remain a mystery, but he must surely have had doubts about his own legacy as a composer. There would have been no guarantee at the time that Rossini's work would outlive him and indeed, while La Cenerentola, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Guillaume Tell are still popular 200 years later, the majority of his works remained in obscurity and some were even lost for many of those years. There's still no guarantee that even those works will not become victim of changing fashions, and certainly they will mean little to young fans of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.

Such is the nature of time and inevitably some of these ideas come up directly in the opera. The contrasts and commonalities that the opera explores are brought out in the stage direction, which is undertaken in this Detmold production by the composer himself. In the sharing of roles - the grandfather becoming Rossini and the children's parents becoming Figaro and Isabella - the point is clearly made that as long as we keep looking backwards, we won't change the future. The idea of the opera is not really any more complicated than that, and in fact is very simple in terms of plot development and the playing out of the scenes. It perhaps doesn't always keep one engaged through the scenes with Rossini being berated by his soprano wife and manservant or in the children's recitative passages, but the musical expression is wonderful and contributes to suggesting much more in its wide variety of colours and textures.

There are good performances and strong singing from the dual-role principal singers; Emily Dorn as Rossini's wife Isabella frequently lapsing into Mozart like soprano coloratura, Theodore Browne playing the tenor Figaro/father and Stefan Stoll as grandfather/Rossini are both excellent, as is Irina Meierding playing a variety of minor roles. The children only have spoken roles. Heusinger's stage direction is basic but effective, the set well decorated to present the limited drama. A revolving platform shows the present as if through a TV screen and the Rossini period as if through a proscenium arch. Video imagery is used for the transitions between past and present. It works hand-in-hand with the musical score and the Landestheater Detmold itself, extending out into the theatre boxes for music and chorus, presenting a wider immersive theatrical experience that is enhanced on DVD.

The DVD image is standard definition PAL, not always perfectly sharp or focussed when viewed on a HD screen, but the filming captures the colour and design of Heusinger's production well. The sound quality is excellent with Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and 5.1 mixes allowing the voices, detail of the score and the clarity of the varied instruments and SWR Experimentalstudio's live electronics to be enjoyed. Although the DVD is region-free, there are unfortunately no subtitles provided in any language. A DVD-ROM feature contains only a digital copy in 1080i which actually looks much clearer on a smaller screen than the DVD on a HD TV. There is a booklet enclosed in German only, with a tracklist, cast biographies, a synopsis, an essay on the opera and an interview with the composer.

Links: Landestheater Detmold, Edition Gravis

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Vienna, 2022)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2022

Philippe Jordan, Calixto Bieito, Andreas Schager, René Pape, Martina Serafin, Iain Paterson, Ekaterina Gubanova, Clemens Unterreiner, Daniel Jenz, Martin Häßler, Josh Lovell

Wiener Staatsoper Live - 27 April 2022

All of Wagner's mature works have their own particular qualities and strengths, and his final work Parsifal may well be the pinnacle of all opera, but nothing matches Tristan und Isolde for sheer sustained intensity. Some will be dismayed at the often controversial - more often baffling - concept and aesthetic of Calixto Bieito's stage productions being imposed upon such a work as Tristan und Isolde under the current administration of the Vienna State Opera directed by Bogdan Roščić. If you are able to get past this however, it's surely possible to recognise that the director has nonetheless found his own way of tapping into and representing the essential inner strength and intensity of a piece that should never fail to challenge.

If you can get the intensity of the inner emotional content of this opera across not just at the love potion conclusion of the first Act, but can even create that intensity from the outset and build it up to that conclusion, you're are definitely in tune with the intent of the work. There may not be a ship at sea but water does play a part throughout. Act I is a fairly sparse affair, looking like it takes place in an Irish fishing market with a couple of shallow pools of water, sluice channels, on the darkened stage while blindfolded children sit on rows of swings. There is evidently a lot of psychopathology to unpack as far as the red-haired Irish princess in her green polka dotted frock is concerned, and Isolde wields her history, her family, her regal position and her Irish heritage as a weapon to unleash against the betraying Tristan and her own self-betrayal.

Not only has she healed and fallen in love with the man she later discovers is responsible for killing her betrothed Morold, but Tristan is now bringing her as a 'tribute' to be married to his uncle King Mark of Cornwall. That outpouring of loathing and self loathing is fully felt on the stage here, with a duffel coated Tristan right there in front of her and subjected to her fury as he rolls around in the shallow waters. Such is the power and intensity of Martina Serafin's Act I performance that you don't need a love potion for it to develop into something dangerous, and indeed - since it's Bieito, there obviously isn't a flask as such. Each drink the frustration, rage, anger, delirium and love out of the hands of the other, while Brangäne walks past carrying a fish in a plastic bag in each hand. There's nothing of elevated medieval royalty about this, the production demonstrating more that it is an exercise in the human capacity to elevate themselves though love, and for love to exceed human boundaries.

Act II similarly avoids any more typical depiction of Isolde and Tristan's ill-advised and not so surreptitious encounter together, the two instead appearing in separate floating rooms - the more earthbound Brangäne scaling and gutting a fish - that they proceed to tear down. It's simple enough symbolism, the lovers rising above the earth, still trying to strip away any physical boundaries and mortal impediments that would prevent them achieving a union of perfect bliss. All the jumping around, tearing books and unbuttoning dresses does distract and impede the singers a little from fully getting across the emotional depths to which they are wrapped in each other.

At this stage however, union is of course not possible, the two of them still in separate rooms, distinct corporeal entities, unable to consummate that union on any physical or earthly plane. The necessary impossible intensity of this situation is still fully felt, and King Mark's arrival almost seems a welcome appearance that prevents them from spontaneous combustion. Much as I still enjoy seeing what René Pape brings to this role, his grave intoning precisely what is needed here, it has to be said that he is no longer the force he once was and it's beginning to show. The dynamic that he brings however is still effective as Tristan is not struck down by Melot in this scene (both Melot and Mark are sidelined as minor figures in this production), but attempts to perish by his own hand, Isolde attempting to join him.

Despite the usual provocation of full-frontal nudity - a wall of naked male and female figures slowly advance and decorate Kareol like statues, many in embrace - Calixto Bieito otherwise plays out Act III without any significant reworking of Wagner's mood and mysticism. Andreas Schager's Tristan is a bloodied, agonised figure, his anxiety and longing matched in intensity only by Iain Paterson's faithful Kurwenal here. Tristan expires on an overturned table, which is righted by Isolde who sinks to her own love-death reaching out across the table to him. It's an affecting moment however you play it.

The part that Philippe Jordan's conducting of the Wiener Staatsoper orchestra plays in this can't be underestimated. It's a perfectly controlled affair, unleashing forces in response to the stage directions, working in accordance with them, ensuring that everything seen or suggested is brought out with full impact. The performance of Andreas Schager should also be acknowledged. Any prior reservations about his singing or acting abilities are quickly dismissed as he makes a huge impression in Act I, conflicted between his heroism, his love and his betrayal. Already everything that needs to be put in place has been firmly established right from the start, the direction working beyond the surface to bring out all the competing, conflicting forces, the love/hate and love/death paradoxes. He carries this through to Act III with complete commitment. Much the same goes for Martina Serafin's performance. It's perhaps not as strong and consistent vocally, but she is utterly engaging and no less impressive alongside Schager as Isolde.

Any reservations put forward by naysayers quick to denounce anything challenging that strays too far from the familiar are also easily countered. Some will still complain at anything Calixto Bieito turns his hands to, but I would be amazed that anyone could fail to be moved by what takes place on stage and in the pit in this production, or seriously believe that the stage direction takes anything away from it. Jordan's conducting finds the rhythms and moods well, and Schager and Serafin's interpretation of Tristan and Isolde is deeply felt. Regardless of what you make of the strangeness of the set designs, there is little doubt that Bieito's direction of the cast/actors has been instrumental in achieving that, and the fact that the Vienna production carries the force of the work entirely should be abundantly clear.