Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin
Scottish Opera, 2018
Stuart
Stratford, Oliver Mears, Samuel Dale Johnson, Natalya Romaniw, Peter
Auty, Sioned Gwen Davies, Alison Kettlewell, Anne-Marie Owens, Graeme
Broadbent, Christopher Gillett, Alexey Gusev, James Platt, Matthew
Kimble
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 28 June 2018
Pushkin's
Eugene Onegin has been praised as "an encyclopaedia of Russian life" but
it's one of those works that manages to encapsulate the characteristics and behaviours of a nation within a story of the intimate sadness and tragic fate
that life holds in store for many of us. Pushkin wrote his own tragic
Russian story, killed in a duel over a romantic dispute like Lensky
in his great masterpiece, and Tchaikovsky poured his own personal, marital and
emotional struggles into his work here, and the personal input of both creators can be deeply felt in Eugene Onegin.
It's not much
to ask to have that reflected and expect to feel deeply moved by
a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and while it rarely fails to hit the mark,
there are many ways of approaching the subject. At one extreme you can
have Stefan Herheim turning the work indeed into "an encyclopaedia of
Russian life" complete with cosmonauts, Red Army troops and a dancing bear taking it right up to the
present day, making the point that the Russian character - as well as
the essential human character - remains largely unchanged. At the other
minimalist extreme, Robert Carsen ties the emotional impact of the work
and the course of a life to the colours of the seasons. Others, such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, have focussed
on how much of Tchaikovsky's life and troubled sexual identity can be
clearly mapped onto the characters in the story.
Oliver Mears, the current artistic director of the Royal Opera House in Covent
Garden and former director of NI Opera, makes a return visit with his
Scottish Opera production of Eugene Onegin and doesn't attempt anything
quite as radical as the above examples, but in another way it taps into
the idea of simple lives caught up in something greater. What it does manage to do
is grasp that sense of the scope of life and love, of the personal and
intimate placed within the greater context of life, memory and the
passing of time; the madness and insensitivity of youth that can have an
impact that resonates through a whole life and that we can only grasp
the enormity of it when it's far too late to change anything.
Mears
employs a simple enough device to get this across, having the silent
figure of an elderly Tatyana recall and rewatch a significant event in
her youth that would forever determine its future direction, all of it taking place in a single room of fading memory. I was immediately
resistant to the idea, since the ending in Tchaikovsky's opera - and the melancholic tone of the work throughout - already
places the work into the context of memory and the passing of time.
Tatyana's rejection of the repentant Onegin at the end of the opera,
even though she is clearly in love with him, is an immensely powerful
conclusion that could hardly be delivered in a more effective manner
with the addition of another rejection of Tatyana finally tearing up the
letter and forever setting the matter to rest.
On the
other hand it's quite plausible that the matter between Tatyana and
Onegin might certainly be over, but both will still carry the regret for
the rest of their lives. If it doesn't make the conclusion any more
devastating, it succeeds in driving the point home,
particularly as Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera Orchestra
deliver the final blows mercilessly after succeeding in holding the
audience in a state of romantic melancholy for the larger part of the
performance, conserving those energies for the other real moments of emotional
impact; in Onegin's rejection of Tatyana's love letter and in the
tragic and foolhardy death of Lensky in the duel.
There
are other ways of showing how we can end up paying for the folly of
youth later in life, but most obviously it's Onegin who carries this
burden. One of the best ways I've seen this done is in the 2013 Royal Opera House production, where Onegin is led during the Polonaise on a dance
through a constant progression of women that gradually wears him down
with the passing of the years. It leaves him in the perfect state to
have his eyes opened to the opportunities of real love and stability in
his life that have been lost. Interestingly, with an elderly Tatyana
coming back to a dusty, decaying Larin mansion, once filled with life,
Mears's direction makes you consider everything else that has been lost
over time. For the first time really the Lensky's tragedy carried through for
me, and I wondered what had become of Olga and the direction her life
subsequently must have taken. Would Lensky's death have stayed with her
or would the memory have faded with time and the other needs of life?
It's
essential that, like Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, the reader or listener
identify with the characters in the story and see their lives in that
kind of context; Onegin as tragedy plus time. By casting the net of
time further - Herheim's production certainly does this, and so too does
Kasper Holten's doubling of the older Tatyana and Onegin looking back
on their younger counterparts - Oliver Mears captures that sense of the
work not so much as an encyclopaedia of Russian life, but just an
encyclopaedia of life. There are many perspectives you can place on
Eugene Onegin, but the most important one is what the individual
listener and spectator brings to it; and the passing of time, the
changes it brings and the regrets that still sting are something that
everyone can relate to.
That's not to say that the viewer
has to do all the work. Far from it. While the perspective Oliver Mears introduces sets the work in a wider context, Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera
Orchestra permit the listener to feel the heat of life and the
complexity of sentiments associated with it in every note of
Tchaikovsky's beautiful melodies and dances. The singing and
characterisation are critical however, particularly for Tatyana and
Onegin, and the casting was nigh on perfect here. Natalya Romaniw was
simply stunning. If she was a little blank and cool in her acting,
frozen mortification works well for Tatyana, and all the yearning was there
in a superbly sung performance. She had a perfect counterfoil in
Samuel Dale Johnson's Onegin, initially aloof (making an entrance on a
live horse!) and little by little falling prey to his own personality
flaws. There were certainly no flaws in his singing. The quality of
singing and characterisation of Olga and Lensky by Sioned Gwen Davies
and Peter Auty was evident in how much you cared about their fates.
Eugene
Onegin can sometimes risk being a little aloof and cool in its
mannerisms of detachment if the music and singing aren't all perfectly
aligned to bring out the true sentiments. That necessarily goes beyond
the principals, the larger picture of life and the impact of time
extending to the supporting characters, from Madame Larina and the nurse
Filippyevna's views and life experiences, to Prince Gremin's reflections on
married life and love later in life. The chorus, the dancers, also all
contribute to the sense of life viewed comprehensively in all its
richness, but with an underlying melancholy for the impact of that time exerts on it.
Everything that is great about Eugene Onegin comes together perfectly
in this Scottish Opera production.
Links: Scottish Opera
Modest Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov
L’Opéra national de Paris, 2018
Vladimir
Jurowski, Ivo van Hove, Ildar Abdrazakov, Evdokia Malevskaya, Ruzan
Mantashyan, Alexandra Durseneva, Maxim Paster, Boris Pinkhasovich, Ain
Anger, Dmitry Golovnin, Evgeny Nikitin, Peter Bronder, Elena Manistina,
Vasily Efimov, Mikhail Timoshenko, Maxim Mikhailov, Luca Sannai
Culturebox - 7 June 2018
There's
a sense of the epic in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov that is entirely in
keeping with the importance of the period in Russian history and with
the nature of the Russian characteristics displayed in it. What is also
essential about Mussorgsky's epic vision for the work is its ability
not just to capture a sense of intimacy and personal conflict within that
historical drama - a common enough characteristic in opera - but how he
is able to make those personal sentiments just as grand and epic without
losing their human character. Mussorgsky takes human sentiments of
sadness, regret, guilt and internal conflict and gives them a
Macbeth-like Shakespearean depth and complexity on a scale that befits their importance.
You get a sense of that
right from the start in the opera, with the people of Russia calling out
in chorus for him to be their new ruler. You also get a sense of how
Boris feels about this from his very first line: "My soul grieves". He
has a heavy duty to perform to live up to the expectations of the
Russian people and do them justice, but there is also a sense of guilt
and remorse for the manner in which he has come to power, with rumours
already accusing him of murdering the young Tsarevitch Dmitriy from the
line of Ivan the Terrible to ascend to the throne himself. An accumulation of
misfortune and other forces, including the rise of a Pretender to the
throne in Lithuania, turns the people against Godunov, and the combined
results strike the Tsar in deeply troubling ways.
Finding
a balance of scale between epic and intimate is one matter, but there
is also the consideration of which version of Boris Godunov is the most
authentic and effective in achieving the necessary impact. Historically
it's been the revised 1872 version that has been most commonly used,
and understandably so as it contains many extensions to Mussorgsky's
brilliant score, but Rimsky-Korsakov's reworking of the original
materials has also been popular. Gradually however, we are seeing more
productions of the original 1869 version, commonly with a few additions
from the revised 1872 version that are deemed too good to be left out.
The
2018 Paris production however, directed by Ivo van Hove and conducted
by Vladimir Jurowski, takes very much a purist approach by sticking to
the complete 1869 original version of Boris Godunov, with no Polish Act
nor any of the 1872 additions. It's purist at least in musical terms,
but clearly with the controversial Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove involved in the project it's going to be anything but purist as far as
the staging goes. That presents an intriguing team that should find a
good balance between the grandly epic and the deeper underlying personal
sentiments and in many respects both sides of the work are well
represented, but the production seems to be more effective for the
choice of the stripped down force of the 1869 version than for anything
that Jurowski or van Hove bring to the work.
As is usually the case with this director, van Hove relies on a minimal staging, abstract-modern
with no period or historical trappings. The use of the space, opened
up with back projections of the Russian people and landscapes that are
mirrored to the sides, permits a sense of epic scale that can also close
the work down to a more intimate level of intensity. A staircase is
often present, leading up and also leading down beneath the stage, the
symbolism of which is clearly apparent, representing rise and fall, and
the separation of the ruling classes from the people. Other scenes are
effectively austere, such as between Pimen and Grigoriy in the cell of
the monastery in Chudov, needing no further elaboration than two people
in near-darkness recounting events in words and divulging the thoughts
that run through their minds.
How much of the success in
getting this across is down to effective direction, how much is down to
the musical performance and how much of this is simply down to the power
of the story and Mussorgsky's scoring of it is debatable, but it seems
to me that it's Mussorgsky's score that does the bulk of the work. Even
then Jurowski's conducting seems rather restrained and unfocussed,
although it's hard to judge fairly from an internet stream (I'll be
listening again more closely to the live radio broadcast on France
Musique this weekend), and yet there's no question that the drama and the
dynamic is all there. Likewise Ivo van Hove doesn't seem to bring much
to an interpretation of the drama, but it doesn't get in the way of it
either.
There are a few stylistic touches applied, but
perhaps the only significant twist is at the conclusion. Not only does
Boris Godunov finally and dramatically succumb to the pressures of
family problems, famine blighting the country and growing instability in
his mind over his murder of Dmitriy, but his son dies too at the hand
of the Pretender Grigoriy. It's a dark dramatic moment that doubles
down on the music that Mussorgsky provides for this finale and, as
Boris's son's reign was indeed cut short in deference to the False
Dmitriy, it even effectively conveys the suggestion in Mussorgsky's
music that the conflict and turmoil of this historical period is far
from over.
Ideally you want a Russian cast in Boris
Godunov for maximum effectiveness, at least in the principal roles, and
there's little to find fault with in team assembled for the Paris
production. Ildar Abdrazakov is perhaps a little too smooth and lacking
the necessary depth and edge to get across the full conflict of Boris
Godunov. He sings the role well, but there's not enough emotion in the
voice and too much overplaying in the acting to try to compensate for
it. Ain Anger is an appropriately grave austere and occasionally
ominous Pimen, there's a similar good balance of restraint and gravity
in Maxim Paster's Shuysky, and Vasily Efimov brings vocal
colour and some hard truths as the Holy Fool. Lots to enjoy in the
singing performances then with strong a strong chorus combining to make
a convincing case for the original 1869 version of Boris Godunov
becoming the canonical version of this great work.
Links: L’Opéra de Paris, Culturebox
George Benjamin - Lessons in Love and Violence
Royal Opera House - London, 2018
George
Benjamin, Katie Mitchell, Stéphane Degout, Barbara Hannigan, Gyula
Orendt, Peter Hoare, Samuel Boden, Jennifer France, Krisztina Szabó,
Andri Björn Róbertsson
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 26 May 2018
I
think it's fair to say that George Benjamin and Martin Crimp have paid
more attention to the structure than the plot of their latest opera, and
judging by the interviews with both of them in the Royal Opera House
programme for its world premiere they'd probably be the first to admit
it. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with that in an opera
where the abstraction of music and its construction have an important
part to play in addition to the dramatic narrative. As it happens
however, Lessons in Love and Violence is not only brilliantly
structured, it also seem to achieve exactly what it sets out to achieve,
and perhaps more than you might expect from the title.
Maybe
that kind of tight focus without any unnecessary over-elaboration is
all we need in a situation, and certainly Benjamin's previous
collaboration with playwright Martin Crimp, Written on Skin, is just as
tightly and effectively delineated. But there might also be something
more that we can derive from the artistry of the composer's musical
interpretation of the text, from Katie Mitchell's direction and from the
singing performances themselves. Certainly every element of the work
has had the utmost attention, thought, precision and talent applied to
its component parts, and in the combination of them raise the work to
much more than the sum of them.
The lesson in love and
violence that Benjamin and Crimp (and Mitchell and Degout and Hannigan
et al) give us - or rather the lesson that they show us being passed on
from one generation to the next - is thematically similar to Written on Skin and likewise based on a historical event
and an old text, but reflected to some extent through a modern-day
perspective. Drawn from, or perhaps more inspired by Marlowe's play
'Edward II', Lessons in Love and Violence is based on the situation (and
violence) that ensues when the king's military advisor Mortimer takes
offense at the favour and influence that Edward II's lover Gaveston has over the king,
over the position it leaves the queen Isabel in, for the scandal it is
causing and the harm that is doing to a nation slipping into
instability and civil war.
Divided into seven scenes,
running to only 90 minutes without an interval, the drama and phrasing
of the dialogue is certainly mannered and not particularly naturalistic,
but the focus is more on mood than exposition, on the accumulation of
slights and conflicts, on personality and behaviour, all of it leading
from love to acts of cruelty and barbarism. Watching its delivery and
trajectory, it's easy to think that the work is rather laboured in terms
of being meticulously thought out and almost, some might say, too
academic an exercise in putting a situational drama to music. That might
be the case but for the fact that in performance it really doesn't
show.
All you see is a drama of remarkable concision in
its concentration of musical and dramatic forces towards those essential
themes, the work breathing sensual fire and menace. Crimp's phrasing is intense, direct and unadorned, repeating
phrases, overlapping dialogues. Benjamin's score matches the
fluctuations of mood and dynamic, dreamily sensual one moment, slow and
sinister the next, harsh and dissonant the next. Combined they provide
not so much a history lesson as a lesson in how love is viewed as weakness
and how violence permits one to achieve personal and political ends.
The lesson is well learned by the young king who observes the
machinations of Mortimer and Isabel, and the result is that the violence
is turned back on them. At the same time however, the underlying story,
character and personalities revealed by the music, the direction and
the singing ensure that this is never purely considered in an abstract
or academic manner but closely related to human emotions and behaviours
which can then be applied in a wider context.
Which is
what Katie Mitchell's contribution brings to the work in collaboration
with set and costume designer Vicki Mortimer, using some of their familiar
traits. The setting is relatively modern-day, removing the subject from
being tied to a historical period drama. The characters sometimes move
in slow motion to enhance action or freeze the surrounding drama to
bring focus to the singer, but the mood and rhythms are always fully
attuned to the score and the text. There is also not unexpectedly a
strong feminist vision the Mitchell brings to the work that is not
necessarily explicit in the drama. Although it's the king's young son
who brings to an end (or perpetuates) the cycle of violence at the
conclusion of the opera with the execution of Mortimer, it's his young
sister (a non-singing role) who wields the gun here - a turn of events
that puts you in mind of Mitchell's work on the Purcell derived opera
Miranda.
Hand-picked for the roles, the cast is simply
superb and it's really hard to imagine any better singers fulfilling the
roles, complementing each other and striking exciting contrasts.
Singing impeccably in English, the French baritone Stéphane Degout
sounds better than ever as the King (he's never mentioned by title as
Edward II), striking out away from being the go-to Pelléas, but still
bringing a wonderful soaring lyricism to another role that flirts with
the danger in his relationship with Gyula Orendt's Gaveston. Barbara
Hannigan has also recently sang in Pelléas et Mélisande, but there's a
rather more steely edge to her character as the queen Isabel, delivering
barbed inflections to the text that rise of course to shrill heights of
imperiousness and ruthlessness. Peter Hoare is terrific as Mortimer,
and Samuel Boden impressively assertive as he takes command later in the
opera.
I mention Pelléas et Mélisande because it did
come to mind now and again watching Lessons in Love and Violence. Not
that it sounds at all like Debussy's masterpiece, but it is similarly structured
into distinct intense dream-like scenes with quite beautiful
instrumental passages between them. There's a darker outlook here
however that is also reminiscent of Berg's Wozzeck, another precisely
controlled and intense work. Benjamin however very much has his own
voice, and it's one that clearly works tremendously well in
collaboration with Martin Crimp. Their previous work Written in Skin was
deservedly hailed as a modern masterpiece soon after its initial run
and Lessons in Love and Violence is every bit its equal, on an initial
viewing perhaps an even more brilliant a work in its concept and
execution.
Links: Royal Opera House
Richard Wagner - Lohengrin
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2018
Alain
Altinoglu, Olivier Py, Gabor Bretz, Eric Cutler, Ingela Brimberg,
Andrew Foster-Williams, Elena Pankratova, Werner van Mechelen
ARTE Concert - April 2018
When
it comes to Lohengrin, a more cautious director would seek to downplay
rather than actually highlight any associations that might be made
between Richard Wagner and the Nazis. It's an issue however that is hard
to avoid, since the question of German nationalism lies very much at
the core of the opera and, regardless of its intentions it certainly formed a view of nationalism that Hitler and his adherents took in another direction. Olivier Py,
directing for La Monnaie in Brussels, however tackles the issue head-on ...in a roundabout sort of way.
In fact, Py even takes to
the stage before the start of the opera to explain why he sets his
production in 1945 at the end of the war when Berlin and much of Germany
was lying in ruins. Mainly it's because he believes that Wagner's
Lohengrin is not just a nationalist display, but a warning of where such
sentiments can lead. Wagner can't be entirely exonerated for his
antisemitism, for a sense of jingoism in his works or for their and his
family's later association with the Nazis, but there is certainly a
case that Lohengrin is a work of artistic and cultural expression that
does consider the disastrous future impact of nationalistic sentiments
that can take art and culture and twist it toward personal and political
interests.
Certainly Olivier Py and his regular stage designer
Pierre-André Weitz's touch is all over the La Monnaie Lohengrin. It
works in contrasts of black and white with little of shading in between.
On one side we have Elsa and Lohengrin in pale blue, Lohengrin even
associated with angels, while Ortrud and Friedrich von Telramund are all
in black. King Heinrich incidentally (and somewhat negligibly) is
dressed in grey. Py's Catholic or Christian faith may well play a part
in reducing Lohengrin to such stark divisions, but it's perhaps more a
case of emphasis as they are already there in Wagner's work. Ortrud
certainly appeals to the pagan gods Wotan and Freia in a way that
"allows evil to enter this house" as Telramund describes it. Is it a
lack of 'faith' that leads to the ideal of the German nation being
destroyed from within? And is this inevitable corruption of a pure ideal
not indeed what Wagner's opera is all about?
Well, it's
perhaps a little more complicated than that and it's certainly not as
'black and white' as it looks in the La Monnaie production. Firstly,
there's the setting of Lohengrin, which as Py indicated, appears to take
place in the ruins of the Third Reich, in a burnt-out theatre that has a
platform at the front and the rotating ruin of the building behind.
It's hard to imagine a 'straight' playing out of the legend then, and
indeed the early indications point to a little bit of reinterpretation
with the suggestion being that it is Ortrud who has choked the child
Gottfried, the future ruler that would have taken Brabant to glory. Py,
as he often does, introduces other obscure quotes, symbols and messages;
"Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" (Death is a master from
Germany) on a wall, Ortrud painting a thick black cross, Elsa a white
cross in chalk. Lohengrin's duel with Telramund in on a chessboard
(black and white) rather than with swords, although a battle between
factions takes place in the background.
It's hard to see
any real connect between Py's 1945 setting of the work and Wagner's
setting of the medieval legend, but that could well be intentional,
showing a disconnect between a glorifying vision of Germanic culture
(contrast this with the rather ideologically vacuous 2016 Dresden production)
and the reality of the inglorious conclusion that awaits when it
appropriated towards what Py describes as "the aesthetisation of
politics". That kind of reading is certainly heavily supported by the
rather meta-theatrical set of Act 3, Scene 1. The pastoral idyll
behind the massed chorus of the people of Brabant in this burnt-out
theatre is nothing but a rolled-out backdrop that the stagehands lift,
the set rotating to reveal a sentiment that is built on a framework of
German romanticism and idealism, represented by dusty statues, busts and
monuments to Schiller, Holderin, Casper David Friedrich, Goethe,
Novalis, Schlegel, Grimm, Heine, Carl Maria von Weber and Beethoven,
with even what might be a Nothung buried in the stump of a dead tree.
There
are a lot of ideas and ideals here that never quite seem to gel
together into something entirely coherent in a way that works
hand-in-hand with the opera itself, but the essential points are valid
and well made. The lack of faith in the ideal even by as pure a spirit
as Elsa (who Py aligns with a view of Wagner that Elsa represents the
'volk') who has fallen under the corrupting influence of the likes of
Ortrud and Telramund, means that Lohengrin refuses to be the figurehead
that leads the forces of King Henry the Fowler into battle against
Hungary. Ortrud certainly hammers home the point of ideals being
corrupted in her final words: "Erfahrt, wie sich die Götter rächen, von
deren Huld ihr euch gewandt!" (Learn how the gods take vengeance on you
who no longer worship them!). In case that message isn't delivered
forcefully enough by Elena Pankratova, the fact that it is uttered
amidst the ruins of 1945 makes it hard to ignore the implication that
you could also see Lohengrin as a substitute for Wagner foreseeing and
denying responsibility for the misuse of his art that the Nazis would
put it towards.
Pankratova, as it happens, gets that
across with absolute conviction in one of the strongest performances
among the cast here, but even if not everyone is up to her level, there
are no weak performances or anyone who lets the side down. Andrew Foster-Williams might not have the same strength of personality or
voice, but that suits a dominated, wheedling portrayal of Telramund and
it's an effective performance. Ingela Brimberg mostly meets the
challenges of the role of Elsa and her voice likewise complements that
of Eric Cutler as Lohengrin. Cutler is almost Italianate in his phrasing
and lyricism, if not quite to the extent of Piotr Beczala (at Dresden).
With Klaus Florian Vogt's monopolisation of the role in recent years
however, we know that a lighter higher voice can work well, but it's a
romantic-heroic role that allows a wide range of interpretation, and
it's always interesting to see what a new voice can bring to it.
It
felt like it was more Alain Altinoglu's conducting of the La Monnaie
orchestra that was a little stiff, not really succeeding in capturing
the romantic lyricism of the opera or finding a way to connect it with
the perhaps harder edged tone of the production - but as ever it's hard
to give a fair assessment of that from the compressed audio reproduction
of a live streamed broadcast. There are moments however that capture
the more militaristic and Germanic side of the work well, and some fine
contrasting moments of warmth and sentiment, as in the lovely warm low
brass of Lohengrin's regret in having to reveal his identity. It's an
interesting production, one that does try to engage with the issues
surrounding Lohengrin and its subsequent history, and indeed even look
at it as an opera that looks towards the future, but inevitably in those
circumstances - much like Hans Neuenfel's recent Bayreuth production - it
doesn't feel like it gives a true sense of the opera as Wagner may have
intended it.
Links: La Monnaie, ARTE Concert
Ludomir Różycki - Eros and Psyche
Polish National Opera, 2017
Grzegorz
Nowak, Barbara Wysocka, Joanna Freszel, Wanda Franek, Anna Bernacka,
Aleksandra Orłowska-Jabłońska, Mikołaj Zalasiński, Tadeusz Szlenkier,
Wojtek Gierlach, Adam Kruszewski, Grzegorz Szostak, Mateusz Zajdel
OperaVision - April 2018
The
Polish composer Ludomir Różycki is not a well-known name, but certainly
comes from a musical background and early twentieth century
associations that I personally find interesting. Różycki studied under
Humperdinck in Berlin and was schooled in the style of Wagner and
Strauss and went on to form the Young Poland association of composers
with connections to the Russian Group of Five movement formed by Russian
composers including Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, with the
aim of establishing a new national music identity for Poland.
Inevitably, to judge by Eros and Psyche - which we are fortunate to be
able to see performed thanks to OperaVision - those late-romantic
influences show in the classic mythological subject of Jerzy Żuławski's
libretto and the epic musical treatment applied to it.
Żuławski's
adaptation of the Cupid & Psyche myth certainly presents all the
opportunities for an expanded and rich musical treatment. The ancient
basis of the story is an epic tale of forbidden love that transcends
time and overcomes great obstacles. It's a price Psyche has to pay for
falling in love and looking on the face of an immortal god, Cupid or
Eros, who has been secretly visiting her. Cupid's orders were to use his
dart to make Psyche fall in love with a monstrous creature for
presuming her beauty to be an equal of Venus, but these darts have been
known to go astray and both she and Eros fall under a spell of this
forbidden love and are punished for it, condemned to wander the earth
(and the underworld) eternally.
In Żuławski's version of
the story, that wandering takes Psyche to a number of famous historical
ages, from the Golden Age of Arcadia, to imperial Rome, to early
Christianity in a monastery in Spain, through the French revolution and
into the present day. It's a treatment and a structure that provides a
number of serious obstacles to Psyche, who is visited by Eros in
different guises in each of these situations, and it provides Różycki
with a variety of colours to work with, as well as the
opportunity to push the romantic tone of the music into epic levels. The
tone is inevitably Straussian, with mythological correspondences with
Daphne, Die Liebe der Danae and of course, Ariadne auf Naxos.
And
it would appear to be from Ariadne auf Naxos that director Barbara Wysocka takes her inspiration for the staging of this 2017 production of
Eros and Psyche at the Teatr Wielki, 100 years after its premiere in
Wroclaw. Różycki and Żuławski's version of the story is a relatively
straightforward telling of myth that has none of the framing and
self-referential dramatic and operatic narrative complexities of Strauss
and Hofmannsthal's treatment of Ariadne auf Naxos. Wysocka however
chooses to frames this opera's story of Psyche's wanderings through time
as that of an actress working on a number of period film productions.
It's a reasonable way to make the mythological story modern and
contemporary, but it has to be said that it doesn't appear to bring
anything unexpected out of the work and may indeed even confuse matters
somewhat.
What it does highlight is that the music is
indeed beautifully composed and scored for each dramatic situation like a
movie soundtrack. The first appearance of Eros on the set, emerging out
of the darkness to meet Psyche waiting in anticipation, is lushly and
scored with a romantic surge. Each of the mini movies are given titles
(Rome, Under the Cross, With Blood etc.) the titles and Falconetti Joan
of Arc-like close-ups of Psyche accompanied by sweeping musical
introductions. Conducted by Grzegorz Nowak, the music is a treat for
anyone who likes their late and post-romantic indulgent Strauss or
Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrations, and it's wonderful to hear another
Polish composer other than Szymanowski working in this register.
Lived
through the movies, this undoubtedly helps maintain the
larger-than-life character of the mythological romance between Eros and
Psyche that is otherwise abandoned in the production, and it retains all
the colour of the periods and locations. It's perhaps a bit too busy
with extras and camera crews cluttering the stage as well, adding a
layer of remove that the opera doesn't really need, and it may even
detract from the character of the work as well. Psyche's journey and her
encounter with Eros in various guises in different eras (with Blaks the
farmhand who has been condemned alongside her for disturbing the
meeting between the illicit lovers also present) raises questions of
decadent living (Rome), sin (The Cross) and compassion (Paris) are also
considered perhaps as necessary stages in her journey to redemption.
On
the other hand if 'Psyche' gains awareness of such matters through the
movies she plays the lead role in, then that element isn't entirely lost
in the 2017 production. Nor is it lost in how it is covered in the
direction or the musical and singing performances. Joanna Freszel is
very much centre stage as Psyche and the role is not without its
challenges (if not quite at the Richard Strauss level of demands), and
she gives an engaging and note-perfect performance throughout, her voice
having a lovely character and timbre. The high tenor role of Eros is
almost Mozartian by comparison and tests the tenor's ability to hold it
steady but Tadeusz Szlenkier certainly brings a lyrical sweetness to the
role. There are good supporting performances from the remainder of the
cast, particularly from Anna Bernacka as Hagne (et al) and from Mikołaj Zalasiński as Blaks.
Links: Polish National Opera, OperaVision
Giuseppe Verdi - Aida
Royal Swedish Opera - Stockholm, 2018
Pier
Giorgio Morandi, Michael Cavanagh, Christina Nilsson, Ivan Defabiani,
Katarina Dalayman, Lennart Forsén, Alessio Cacciamani, Johan Edholm,
Jihan Shin, Jessica Forsell
OperaVision - April 2018
If
there's one Verdi opera that needs to be continually reassessed and
reconsidered in terms of whether it still has any real relevance or
anything to say to a modern audience it's probably La Traviata, but Aida
isn't far behind. Both works might have been fuelled by real anger
against social institutions, but if they ever did have anything
important to say it's easy for it to get lost in the star power and
glamour that the operas' settings and subjects inevitably attract. La
Traviata however can be immensely powerful and hard-hitting about
society's treatment of women when it's allowed to be, and condemnation
of the horrors of war in Aida need not necessarily be submerged under
the bombast of Verdi's score and the pomp and ceremony of grand opera
spectacle.
You do have to question the effectiveness of
Verdi's treatment in Aida however, in how it seems to get carried away
with its exotic setting and location, in the attention that Verdi pays
towards Eastern-influenced melodies, grand religious ceremonies and
ceremonial triumphal marches before royalty. With the melodramatic turns
of love, family and duty all becoming intertwined, it threatens to
overshadow the anti-war, anti-religious sentiments that are there, but
there have been some notable attempts (and failures) to move away from
the glamour and address the real issues at the heart of the work - if
you consider that they were ever really there.
The short
overture to Aida certainly reflects a more sombre note, and in Michael Cavanagh's production for the Royal Swedish Opera, that's immediately
established as being associatedwith the more intimate story of
the individuals whose lives have suffered because of the demands placed
on them by the 'state'. We already see Aida and Radamès buried alive in
the tomb that descends to show a figure we can presume in Amneris, lying
face down in a pool of blood with a knife by her side. The note of
melancholy that can also be found in Radamès ode to an impossible love
for a slave girl of his nation's enemy ('Celeste Aida') is soon
overwhelmed by cries of 'war and death' as the news of Amonasro's
advance is brought by the High Priest, Ramfis.
It's in
such contrasts however that Aida does effectively present the conflict
between the individual's hope and dreams and the necessity of putting
them aside for something as monstrous as war. Radamès's personal
conflict is mirrored in the situation of Aida later in the opera when
she is torn between her love for Radamès and her love for her father,
Amanasro, the King of Ethiopia whose armies have been routed and taken
captive by the Egyptian commander and his forces. There's also very much
a case put of there being no real victors when it comes to war. "Today
we are the victims of fate, tomorrow fate may strike you", Amonasro
warns Radamès, and history has shown the truth of such turns of fate in
the downfalls of the great.
This aspect is borne out and
elaborated upon quite successfully in the Stockholm production even if
the focus is very much on the small personal drama. It's hard to
criticise the production on those grounds, as this is indeed very much
how it is played by Verdi. So yes, Aida has musical and dramatic flaws,
or even if you don't consider them flaws - and it's perfectly valid to
enjoy the opera for the music and singing for what it is - you still
adjust the emphasis at your peril. Olivier Py's scattershot Paris production demonstrated the risks inherent in that whereas the chamber
approach as seen more recently in the La Monnaie production, touched
much more effectively on the true nature of the work in a way that
prevented it from it appearing dated and out of touch with the times.
Magdalena
Åberg's set and costume designs for the Royal Swedish Opera production
are unimposing, but there is a balance struck between modern military
uniforms with AK47 rifles and some nods to the Egyptian heritage of the
work with its robes and ceremonies. The production does well to avoid
the familiar imagery and processional choreography, presenting a more
minimal stage with a gold wall in the background and blue lighting that
nonetheless retains an air of a royal palace with notions of strict
protocol and order. So there's a fresh modern outlook on the work at the
same time as the necessary contrasts between the institutions of the
state and the ordinary citizen are marked out well; contrasts that focus
on the intimate love story at the heart of the work, one crushed by the
weight of those powers that Verdi depicts so dramatically.
The
main issue that has to be dealt in a production of Aida is in how to
present it's Triumphal March; whether to make it a glorious spectacle or
undercut it with realism. Cavanagh's approach wisely takes a dim view
of celebrating slaughter, so while the chorus and trumpets are
proclaiming victory and the greatness of their King, we are shown scenes
of the reality of the war that Radamès has waged against the Ethiopian
tribes. And it is very much that of a large military force, bulked out
in combat gear with every precision targeting technology at their
disposal, bringing horror to the lives of ordinary citizens. It's very
well staged - with curtains blocking off live vignette scenes rather
than using projections - and it hammers home the horror of the contrast
between the ideal of duty and the reality for Radamès.
Musically,
Pier Giorgio Morandi conducts an excellent performance that plays well
to the contrasts of Verdi's melodies and the variety of sentiments
within it without letting it get too sentimental. The singing
performances, despite some initial reservations with timing and technique,
are also quite good, and backed up with a superb chorus. You have to
pity any young tenor who has to launch straight into an aria like
'Celeste Aida' with barely time to warm up, but Ivan Defabiani's Radamès
really comes through spectacularly later with a performance that builds
in character and confidence. Christina Nilsson as Aida also takes a
short while to find her feet after 'Ritorna vincitor', but likewise
gives a fine performance, the two of them making a convincing young
couple whose love is challenged by the scorned Amneris. Katarina Dalayman shows the right kind of
imperiousness tinged with regret, although her voice is lacking some of
the necessary force. It's in this small scale drama that the bigger
picture is reflected, bearing out the words spoken earlier that "Today
we are the victims of fate, tomorrow fate may strike you".
Links: Royal Swedish Opera, OperaVision
Stephen Sondheim - Assassins
The Gate Theatre, 2018
Selina Cartmell, Rory Corcoran, Muiris Crowley, Brian Gilligan, Kate Gilmore, Dan Gordon, Ger Kelly, Andrew Linnie, Aoibhéann McCann, Ruth McGill, Sam McGovern, Helen Norton, Rachel O’Byrne, Mark O’Regan, Nicholas Pound, Matthew Seadon-Young
The Gate Theatre, Dublin - 28 April 2018
Usually there are a few signs around the entrance to the theatre that warn if there are going to be any sudden loud noises, but I think you could take it for granted that there are likely to be a few gunshots heard in Assassins at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Stephen Sondheim's musical presents accounts of no less than nine people who have plotted to take the life of the incumbent President of the United States of America, and in some cases succeeded. Going out with a bang I guess you could say, and the Gate production makes a bit of an impression as well.
Even as someone unfamiliar with Sondheim and with the musical theatre genre in general, a musical about nine deluded, deranged and dangerous people does strike me as an unusual subject to write songs around. Considering they take place many years apart with no indication that any of them knew one another, I couldn't see how Assassins could be anything more than a series of musical vignettes that possibly delved into the personal backgrounds of each of the nine would-be and actual assassins and the circumstances that led to them pointing a gun at the President. Even though they do indeed take place many years apart, with only Gerald Ford being the target of two different assassins, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman manage nonetheless to weave together 100 years of American history into the production.
The interweaving of separate stories is not purely for dramatic purposes, to provide an overarching narrative rather than a collection of disparate events, but precisely to consider the assassins as a very distinctive and select group of people united by a very singular drive to kill the President of the United States of America. Could there be some common ground? Could they have legitimate grievances about how the USA is governed? Or is the common theme that unites all these individuals merely just mental illness and a sense of self-importance? Even there alone, could that not tell us something deeper about the nature of the where the American Dream meets reality?
Certainly there are on the surface very different motivations between the oldest recorded case here where John Wilkes Booth would shoot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head in a Washington theatre in 1865 and the most recent, John Hinckley Jr, who shot and succeeded in wounding Ronald Reagan in 1981. And yet, there are suspicions that Booth - a stage actor himself - may have been at least in part frustrated by a lack of success and bad press notices and may have seen the shooting of Abraham Lincoln as the ultimate piece of theatre, jumping from the theatre box and shouting 'Sic semper tyrannis!' from the stage straight after the assassination. Hinckley too has some sense of detachment from reality in his obsession with Jodie Foster and her character in the film Taxi Driver, and the shooting of Reagan could also be seen as a theatrical act of attention seeking.
Such little connections creep out also in the lives of Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, the two women who unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford merely weeks apart in 1975. One was a disciple of Charles Manson, the other according to Weidman's book at least, came from the same part of the States as Manson, and knew him from school days. Even though the two women never met in real life as far as we know, Sondheim and Weidman establish this connection between them in an amusing target practice scene. The writers similarly have Booth speak as an 'inspiration' to Lee Harvey Oswald, and many of the other assassins similarly connecting with each other on various levels, whether that be common interests and sentiments, political or personal grievances, or - since such a common aim immediately makes you famous - even just on the level of inspiration or awareness of past assassins.
It's important in a stage production then to both clearly demarcate each of the individuals and their rationale, as well as find a common connection or overarching theme that necessarily draws them together. As if the idea of bringing the nine singing assassins onto the stage weren't a strange enough idea on its own, the concept of bringing them together as part of some kind of macabre carnival game is another inspired touch that the production at the Gate Theatre in Dublin wholeheartedly embrace. Each of the would be assassins are offered a gun and a prize (Shoot the Prez! Win a Prize!) by a rather Pennywise-like clown master of ceremonies - a wonderfully sinister Nicholas Pound as 'The Proprietor' - their efforts marked by a Hit or Miss indicator flashing in lights above the stage. The humour is wonderfully black, Sondheim's songs and music also drawing from carnival themes, country music and a wide variety of styles.
The music and singing performances are a constant delight. Inevitably, working with historical characters of clearly rich colourful backgrounds, each of the individuals is well characterised, but the ensemble playing is also exceptionally good and important to the overall impact and Ruth McGill and Rachel O'Byrne are in fine voice in roles where they have much more to do than just sell sticks of candy. It's the comically incompetent roles of course that get the most laughs, but certainly Aoibhéann McCann shooting at a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken as Sara Jane Moore and Dan Gordon as a Santa-suited Samuel Byck in a Dodgems car strike a wonderfully surreal note and really make the most of characters whose motivations and behaviours strike you as the most unfathomable and deranged. It's a close call though, and - as is at least clear from the account of Lee Harvey Oswald - the nature of the musical and songs is clearly insufficient to delve fully into most complex conspiracies and motivations.
What is clear however is that Assassins brilliantly achieves what it sets out to do, creating a platform that allows the spectator to see this diverse group of individuals as a select group of people and perhaps through that tell us something about the nature of the people and government of the United States. First produced in 1990, the contemporary relevance of Assassins still comes through in 2018, when the question of gun control remains a highly controversial issue. The nine assassins might have very little obviously in common with each other and apparently achieved little of any real political change (much less gun controls), but what happens when a person with mental illness, deranged beliefs and a sense of their own superiority gets their hands on a gun with the promise of a prize of fame and immortality, is still very much a relevant and topical subject.
Links: The Gate Theatre
