“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.
The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap.
![A scene from Der fliegende Holländer [Photo courtesy of Bayerische Staatsoper]](http://www.operatoday.com/Dutchman_Munich04.gif)
Although there was considerable theatrical imagination on display, redemption was in critically short supply in Peter Konwitschny's production of The Flying Dutchman at Munich’s estimable Bavarian State Opera.
It all began very promisingly indeed with a realistic period setting, gorgeously painted, and with luxurious Old Dutch Masters costumes, both designs courtesy of Johannes Leiacker. I was not completely taken with the invention of the mute character “An Angel” (Christina Polzin) who somewhat tailed the leading man as a premonition of Senta, I guess, but never mind. Because, in a stunning directorial stroke, Konwitschny set the second act ladies in a gleaming white contemporary fitness center spinning class! No fooling, this really worked. Mary was the attendant who circulated and dispensed water bottles and towels.
Erik entered in a white bathrobe and slippers (apparently having taken a
sauna) and it is hard to explain the rather carnal element that that visual
introduced into a scene that we usually simply suffer through. And when the
Dutchman arrived, completely anachronistic in his period Flemish drag, wow! Did
it ever hammer home the time warp he was trapped in, and the irrational
inevitability of Senta’s obsession. This was truly powerful theatre, heightened
by the fine lighting design with its isolated areas by Michael Bauer.
And then…Peter lost his way. The final act took place in a harbor-side warehouse with Fest tables/benches, the Dutchman crew visibly partied stage left, and lots of metal drums filled with flammable materials crowded the stage. The face-off between the locals and the spooks, shorn of its element of surprise, looked like a lame “Dance at the Gym” confrontation from West Side Story. And in a critical artistic mis-step, after Senta’s last outburst she torched one of the storage drums, and a huge explosion blew everyone away. Everyone.
And…The…Music…Stopped.
Somewhere in the far distance, perhaps on a boom box in the ladies dressing room, we faintly heard the final bars playing as the cast was revealed standing down lit and ghostly behind a scrim. Dead as door nails. Or Dutchmen. In a box, house left, a pained spectator yelled “For God’s sake, play the rest of the music!” No one shushed him. He was articulating our collective grief.
It is inconceivable that the producers allowed Wagner’s opera to be shorn of its soaring redemption at the expense of an ineffective and inappropriate theatrical effect. Nor can I conceive that a Bernstein, or Karajan, or Maazel, or Barenboim would have allowed this musical cut to happen.
Apparently, young (talented) conductor Cornelius Meister did not have such leverage. Maestro Meister is the youngest General Music Director in Germany (Heidelberg) and his star is justifiably rising. Much of his leadership was richly incisive, with well-judged tempi and fine consideration of his singers. But it has to be said that the tricky ensemble woodwind attacci were a might ragged, and the brass were too many times perfunctory. The string section however, had a fantastic night characterized by warm and accurate tutti playing.
Even a willful re-writing of the story by a bad boy stage director, however, could not steal the focus from the brilliance of Bryn Terfel’s assumption of the title role. Surely this is one of the most glorious vocal instruments currently to be heard in the lyric theatre. From his first intense sotto voce utterance, Mr. Terfel served notice that his Dutchman was more resigned than tortured, more refined than bombastic, more rounded and musical by miles than most park-and-bark Wagnerian practitioners.
That rolling, richly burnished tone poured out with ease and power, and his acting was subtle and noble. His great duet with Senta was as tender and persuasive as I have yet experienced, and his stamina and sound technique found him sounding as fresh at opera’s end as at the start. Richly colored, finely detailed, superbly shaped phrases characterized Terfel’s tremendous musicianship, and they were wedded to an easy, engaging stage presence. If we are ever searching for members of A New Golden Age (and aren’t we always?), we can start with Bryn Terfel.
He was not alone in his success. Anje Kampe served up a radiant and vocally generous Senta, building on her already fine reputation as a Sieglinde of choice. While ample in volume, and secure in all ranges and volumes, the voice is just a bit drier than, say, Hildegard Behrens, a great Senta of the recent past. Still, her restrained vibrato made Ms. Kampe’s impersonation more youthful than womanly, and that certainly was a rewarding take. Her acting was passionately committed.
Nikolai Schukoff was a very fine Erik, with plenty of thrust to his substantial, essentially lyric tenor, and a handsome and youthful stage presence. There were plenty of sparks between him and our doomed heroine. I first saw Matti Salminen’s seasoned Daland in Savonlinna some years ago and his definitive performance has only deepened over time, with very little perceptible loss in vocal allure or power. Julia Oesch contributed a handsome, securely sung Mary. Kevin Conners seems to be a local favorite, but I found his stentorian Steersman a bit longer on power than finesse. The hard-working chorus performed well under the direction of Andrés Máspero.
Can this Dutchman yet be saved? Restoring the finale Wagner wrote would be a good start. Seriously, a musically and dramatically honest re-look of Act Three could transform this otherwise inventive and rewarding production into a memorable one.
James Sohre