Operadox

Into the Opera Den

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"Der Fliegende Holländer"

-dozen rows of seating. Imaginative and appropriate use of split live-stream and recorded videography allowed Senta to leap from the cliff into the ocean in a way which really connected with the music. I look forward to its return, with another cast, in the May 2016 Wiesbaden International Festival.

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Outdated Avant Garde

When you find, during a performance, that you are praying that it will JUST STOP, you know there is a problem somewhere. Lachenmann's 1997 'music with pictures' Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (Frankfurt Oper, 23 September) purports to be based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Little Matchgirl, with additional text by Gudrun Ensslin and Leonardo da Vinci. From that you should be able to gauge how pretentious the whole exercise was.The work has 24 continuous sections, lasts 104 minutes (I felt every one) and scored for the largest orchestra I have ever seen (it filled the stage as well as two whole levels of seating), two 'prepared' pianos, a chorus about which there was nothing choral, two sopranos who spent a great deal of time climbing ladders and a Reader, the composer himself, of the Leonardo pieces in section 18. It was not thrilling, or challenging, or witty - just unutterably dull. The most interesting element of the evening was a live-stream of an old man sharing his lettuce with a guinea pig. Often he lay down (the man not the guinea pig) and the height of the drama was reached when he took off his red jumper. In 1976 I wrote a piece for my school composition competition - it was scored for milk bottles (with various amounts of water in them), buckets of water into which vegetables of various shapes and sizes were thrown, violin (which played one final note while otherwise the player was scored to polish the instrument in various ways), piano (played with a ruler by the Classics master) and a faux Greek Chorus (the 1st XV) chanting a language of my own devising. I was 18; it was a joke. I would have had more respect for Mr Lachenmann and Frankfurt Oper if he, and they, hadn't been so deadly, dreadfully serious.

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Pelleas in Berlin

I always think that a little Debussy goes an awful long way, but this "Pelleas & Melisande" (Deutsche Oper, 19 September) as a glorious three hours of music, water, shadow and light. Marco Arturo Marelli's production had a stunning set of doors and doorways, slopes, ladders and staircases, windows & masonry - and everywhere water (at one point Pelleas was up to his waist in it). The orchestra - under Maestro Donald Runnicles - played with extraordinary lucidity, within which, below the French splashiness, shadows of Wagner and foreshadowing of Strauss were very clear. The singing, led by the splendid Josef Wagner (Golaud) was of a very high quality, with the name roles sung with great intensity by Thomas Blondelle (P) and Jane Kurucova (M).

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Of Fire & Water ~ Der Fliegende Holländer

I always find early Wagner rather disconcerting, not sounding like Wagner at all sometimes, as if Verdi had wandered off into Bavaria. This Flying Dutchman (Vienna Staatsoper, 5 September) was unsettling for further reasons. Peter Schenider took a very slow pace throughout, bringing the opera in at just 150 continuous minutes (a good 15 minutes longer than most other conductors) while Christine Mielitz's production was way too 'busy', with a set of considerable moving parts and dozens of apparently unmotivated lighting cues. This was the first performance of the revival and the Chorus, in particular, showed signs of insufficient movement rehearsal (though the singing was splendid throughout) especially in the very complicated - and confusing - sequence at the start of act 3. However (and it's an enormous however) the stellar cast did not disappoint. Certainly the star of the evening was Ricarda Merbeth (Senta), who I last heard in Die Aegyptische Helena (Frankfurt, May 2015). Every element of her performance was riveting, from her story-telling in act 2 to her final sacrifice at the end of the opera (more of this later). She was joined by a powerful, brooding Holländer (Michael Volle), and their act 2 duet was the lynch-pin of the fabulous core of the opera. Hans-Peter König (Daland) completed the trio of brilliant performances, with a bringing together of the stranger and his daughter that was utterly mesmerising. It seems directors continue to struggle with exactly how to deliver this opera, especially the ending. Here's an idea & wrote it! Throughout the work, the key imagery is of water and the ocean, storm, tempest. Finally Senta gives herself to the Holländer through drowning, allowing for the possibility (though baptism, as it were) of rebirth and redemption. In this production Senta apparently doused herself in petrol and walked down into a pit of fire, while the Holländer observes down stage left. There is no redemption, no forgiveness (please listen to the music, Ms Mielitz, it's all there) and we are left watching one thing and listening (or trying to - the Viennese audience started to applaud before the final notes!) to something utterly unrelated. I am seeing the opera twice again in November (Frankfurt & Berlin) &

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Sydney in July

Last month I managed to catch three operas on successive nights at the Sydney Opera House &the current season, all over fifteen years old: Don Carlos (1999), Turandot (1990) and La Traviata (1994). One worries that productions, however good, are kept in the repertoire at the expense of new works.Elijah Moshinksy's Don Carlos is quite stunning, with sets, costumes & lighting apparently by Velazquez (though actually Paul Brown and Nigel Levings), with pannier skirts, black marble, incense, candlelight all contributing to the oppressive opulence of Philip II's Court. The orchestra and singing was of fine quality with a particularly splendid performance from Jose Carbo (Rodrigo). The spectacle served to illustrate further the psychology of the music rather than over-powering it.This was my third viewing, in twenty years, of Graeme Murphy's orientalist Turandot. Murphy is essentially a choreographer and every movement in this production carries purpose and contributes to setting and story-telling. I think this is still the best interpretation of the Ping, Pong, Pang characters I have seen, while every element contributes to a clearly defined western view of Chinese culture. Yonghoon Lee was a show-stopping (and ridiculously good looking) Calaf while Lise Lindstrom hit every musical and emotional high-note with precision and power.Perhaps the weakest of the three evenings was La Traviata (another lavish Moshinksy production). Unless you are very careful the opera can lose pace and purpose after the great Act II, and this performance did just that. Unfortunately (and quite unfairly) I still have Diana Damrau and Dmitri Hrovostovsky in my ears from the April 2014 Covent Garden production.

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Martinu Premiere

Martinu’s “Julietta” is, at very best, “The Magic Flute” on steroids and, at very worst, two and a half hours of music delivering 20 minutes of narrative. I veer towards the latter end of the spectrum, and this first ever production in Frankfurt has not caused me to reconsider. It is not without reason that Martinu is thought of, primarily, as an orchestral composer, although he wrote more operas than symphonies. All the interesting things in “Julietta” happen in the instrumental writing. The vocal lines are simply tedious; for this reason it is pretty well impossible to say whether the ensemble sang well or not, though I suspect that they did. Director Florentine Klepper did many a splendid thing visually, and I appreciated her extraordinarily fine sense of detail in handling space, set, costume and properties. Yet “Julietta” is a self-consciously surrealist work, set in a dream-logic landscape. In that it is meaningless it is operatically purposeless.

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Pretty Dull Strauss

This new production of “Der Rosenkavalier” for Frankfurt Oper was well sung and played and looked great but it is supposed to be a ‘Komödie für Musik’. This was over four hours without a single funny moment. The set was stunning - a huge revolving cube, giving four different interiors, including a splendid staircase, and which moved left and right stage while revolving. The three walls of the main stage also moved. However, all of these wonderful interior images were of various aspects of a spa-sanitarium in which the Marschallin (Amanda Majeski) was clearly dying. Rather than being a pompous buffoon, Baron Ochs (Bjarni Thor Kristinsson) was a viscious sadist and Octavian (Paula Murrihy) showed no signs of being torn between the Marschallin and Sophie (Christiane Karg) - he was just moving on to the next woman. The result was simply dull. It was appropriate that the musical preludes to act 1 and act 3 were played to a black curtain, because director Claus Guth had nothing to say about what the music portrays - the passion of the older woman and younger man, and the fun and frenzy of the setting up of the restaurant prank on Ochs. Even the magic and majesty of the last 10 minutes (which ranks with 'The Marriage of Figaro’ as the greatest ending in opera, perhaps) was undercut by the idea that the Marschallin is dying. Rather than the sacrifice of the beloved, the release of Octavian from his 'obligation’, setting him free to live a younger love, the dying woman (she’s dead before the curtain falls) is simply passing him on. Majeski was fabulous and Murrihy well up to the mark of the demanding 'trousers role’ even though I still have the memory of Elina Garanca’s fabulous performance (Berlin, December 2014). Karg had a lovely voice but occasionally was too light against the orchestra. Yes, I cried at the end, but it was Strauss, of course. (Frankfurt, 20 June)

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Double Bill at Wiesbaden

Poulenc's "La Voix Humaine" is not a great work but it is certainly worth seeing and it has also interesting foreshadowings of later works such as the "Gloria" and the woodwind sonatas of the early 1960s. Julia Migenes, unfortunately, did not have the variety of colour or enough strength in the chest voice necessary for this demanding role. Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" was altogether different - an imaginative production, beautifully played, powerfully sung by Gerd Grochowski & Vesselina Kasarova. The majestic C major sequence at the opening of the 5th door was tremendous. Each time I see this opera I find it a finer and finer piece: more melodic, less dissonant, more dramatic (despite the cast of only two).(14 June)

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Another Turn of the Screw

As with Mozart, so with Britten - the opera of his I'm watching at any time is my favourite. 'The Turn of the Screw' is a minor masterpiece, a chamber opera written on a magnificent scale, with huge demands on players, singers, directors and with, perhaps, the most demanding role ever written for a boy's unbroken voice. Seen at the fabulous Wiesbaden faux-baroque opera house, 20 June, this is a splendid, dark, frightening, beautiful production (Robert Carsen) in monochrome interlaced with Hitchcock-referenced videography. Great singing, too, from the ensemble particularly Claudia Rohrbach (Governess) and the outstanding treble Yorick Ebert (Miles) - especially in the fiendishly difficult "Malo" sequence in the schoolroom. As an aside, the English pronunciation was remarkably good until the very end and Miles' (spoken) "Peter Quint - you devil", which came out in music-hall German accent! The chamber orchestra is very fine, conducted by Zsolt Hamar, bringing out all the wonders of Britten's score. My next scheduled Britten is "Peter Grimes" (Berlin, February 2016).

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Mainz, Wiesbaden & Frankfurt

Last weekend, as well as 'Medee' in Mainz (Saturday 13 June: see review), I also caught Britten's 'The Turn of the Screw' (Friday 12 June) and a double bill on Sunday 14 June, Poulenc's 'La Voix Humaine' and Bartok's 'Bluebeard's Castle'. Reviews of these will appear shortly. Coming up there is Strauss' 'Der Rosenkavalier' (Saturday 20 June) and Martinu's 'Julietta' (Sunday 21 June), both in Frankfurt.

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Mediocre Medea

Cherubini's music is fabulous, with orchestral writing like early Beethoven. What a pity that the director of this "Medea", Elisabeth Stoppler, didn't apparently listen to it! Jason makes his first appearance, I kid you not, with a dead rhinoceros - he then proceeds to chainsaw the major horn off it (I take it that this is the Golden Fleece mentioned in the text) and passes it round, causing the chorus to experience varieties of religio-sexual ecstasy. Dirce has spent the first act trying to get the bandages off her wrists, which she slashed during the overture; she is clearly barking mad (as is Ms Stoppler I suspect). The singing is spectacular - the final duet of the act especially - Jason (Philippe Do) & Medee (Nadja Stefanoff) among the best of the season.

In the one directorial reference to Euripides, when Medea was discovered 'up above' with the bodies of her dead children, the flaming rhinoceros was up there too. In the last two minutes Kreon shot Medea and Jason shot himself. Utterly, utterly banal. Long evening - the interval was an hour, due to a technical problem with the ludicrous set - but worth it to hear Philippe Do & Nadja Stefanoff

Medea epilogue - I forgot to mention: Dirce recovered from the poisoned cloak, in order to make an appearance in act 3 when she slit her own throat. Why is it that these people get to direct opera and I only get to comment on their abominations? This afternoon, a twentieth century double bill (Poulenc & Bartok) with David & Tomas Steiner.

- Operadox