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Der polemischste aller Komponisten - Bericht aus Mar del Plata
I Aufführung in Mar del Plata (Argentinien)Der im Höheren Institut des Colón Theaters (Buenos Aires) ausgebildete Regisseur präsentiert in Mar del Plata eine Aufführung, die auf die Musik und das Leben des Deutschen basiert. “Was mich am meisten an Wagner fasziniert sind seine mächtigen Widersprüche", erklärt er.
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/3-16649-2010-01-15.html
Die Sopranistin Irene Burt in der Rolle der Sieglinde und der Tenor Juan Borja als Siegmund.
“Mit Wagner geht es mir wie vermutlich Vielen - erklärt Pablo González-Aguilar., Regisseur aus der Höheren Schule des Colón, der in Mar del Plata seit heute eine Aufführung über die Musik und das Leben des Musikers vorstellt - Ich finde, dass seine Texte häufig nicht an die Emotionen heranreichen, die von seiner Musik hervorgerufen werden. Und wenn man über sein Leben nachliest, so stößt man häufig auf ein wirklich widerliches Wesen. Das ist was mich fasziniert: seine mächtigen Widersprüche. Während er einen großen Teil der Tetralogie komponierte, schrieb er gleichzeitig seinen Aufsatz ’Das Judenthum in der Musik".
Mit Aufführungen heute Abend, sowie am kommenden Sonntag und Montag, immer um 21 Uhr, wird das Spektakel, das “Wagner in Zürich / Die Walküre I" getauft wurde, im Mar del Plata Golf Club vorgestellt. Begleitet wird die Vorstellung von einem Essensbuffet, das die in Bayern während der Bayreuther Festspiele angebotenen Gerichte reproduziert: *Kasseler Braten und geräucherter Lachs, verschiedene Sorten Leberpastete, Schinkenbraten, Nürnberger Würstchen, deutsches Bier, Schaumwein und Himbeerdesserts. Die Säle im Club Mar del Platas machen es möglich, die Weltpremiere des ersten Aktes der Walküre zu evozieren, so wie es im Baur au Lac, einem luxuriösen Hotel in Zürich, dargestellt wurde, mit Klavierbegleitung und getrennt von der restlichen Oper, und natürlich, vom gesamten Zyklus des Nibelungenringes. Die Walküre ist der erste Teil des Zyklus, der mit einem Prolog beginnt, dem Rheingold, und der mit Siegfried und der Götterdämmerung endet.
“Neben der Vorführung dieses ersten Aktes, gibt es ein Drama, das sich parallel entfaltet, in den Gesprächen zwischen Wagner und Liszt, die durch Marionetten dargestellt werden und die auf verschiedene Themen eingehen wie die jeweiligen Geliebten, die die beiden im Laufe der Zeit haben, oder die Tatsache dass Wagner in einer Vorstellung die Rollen des Tenors und des Bass singt, obwohl er Liszt zufolge keine von beiden Stimmen gut darstellen konnte. Diese Nebengeschichte ist in Wirklichkeit gedacht, um die Schwierigkeiten darzustellen, die Wagner in der Zusammenarbeit mit anderen sowie in der Akzeptanz fremder Werte hatte." Und in Bezug auf seine antijüdischen Schmähschriften, sagt er: “Es gibt kein mögliches Vertun: was er dort sagt ist verhaltensgestört. Aber man muss auch in Betracht ziehen, dass es einen sehr starken Zeitgeist gibt. Auch wenn nicht alle gleichermaßen heftig waren und ihre Verhalten gegenüber den Juden sehr unterschiedlich sein konnten, war das Thema des Antisemitismus sehr präsent und im Besonderen im intimsten Freundeskreis Wagners hatte diese Präsenz später eine sehr starke Bedeutung für die Rolle, die später der deutsche Rechtsextremismus innerhalb der Bayreuther Festspiele einnahm."
Die Aufführung, die vom Französischen Konsulat in Mar del Plata sowie von der Kulturellen Vereinigung für die Deutsche Sprache unterstützt wird, hat spanische Untertitel und steht unter der musikalischen Leitung von Fernando Di Palma, der außerdem der Pianist der Inszenierung ist. Die schauspielerische Leitung unterliegt Fernando Locatelli, die künstlerische Leitung Martín Gorricho. Alicia Gumá ist für das Kostümbild zuständig, Belén Rivero für das Maskenbild und Bruno Festa für die Beleuchtung. Das Ensemble setzt sich zusammen aus der Sopranistin Irene Burt in der Rolle der Sieglinde, dem Tenor Juan Borja als Siegmund und dem Bass Claudio Rotella in der Rolle des Hunding. Zum Szenenbild, bei dem die Hotelsalons sich in Hundings Haus verwandeln, gehören die von Adriana und María Padra geführten Marionetten, mit den Stimmen von Ricardo Ruttimann und Martín Roubicek in den Rollen von Wagner und Liszt. “Mich faszinieren gewisse Verflechtungen - fügt der Regisseur hinzu. Irene Burt hat bei der letzten Aufführung des Fliegenden Holländers im Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires die Rolle der Senta gesungen (das Teatro Colón ist seit 2006 wegen Renovierungsarbeiten geschlossen.
Anmerkung der Übersetzerin.) Und wer damals bei der Uraufführung in Zürich die Sieglinde gesungen hat, hatte kurz zuvor die Ballade der Senta beim Fliegenden Holländer gesungen."
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METROPOLITAN OPERA NEW YORK
“Contes d’Hoffmann”
3. Dezember 2009
Music Review | Metropolitan Opera
The Old Stories, Updated With G-Strings
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: December 4, 2009
There is much to cheer about in the Metropolitan Opera’s phantasmagorical new production of Offenbach’s “Contes d’Hoffmann” (“Tales of Hoffmann”), which opened on Thursday night.
As conceived, this production was to have featured the tenor Rolando Villazón as the poet, wild-eyed dreamer and delusional lover Hoffmann. When Mr. Villazón, in the midst of a vocal crisis, pulled out last spring, the young Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, who had never sung this daunting role, accepted the assignment. On Thursday he gave his all, singing with ardor, stamina and poignant vocal colorings and winning a rousing ovation. There were technically shaky elements to his performance, and his focused, quick vibrato revealed every slight inaccuracy of pitch. Still, the insecurity actually befitted Mr. Calleja’s take on the character, laid bare emotionally.
The soprano Anna Netrebko may have disappointed her fans by deciding not to sing all four of Hoffmann’s love interests, as originally planned. But she was vocally lustrous, charismatic and wrenching as Antonia, the sickly and frustrated singer who has been warned that singing will lead to her death. She also made a captivating and tart Stella, the prima donna Hoffmann is smitten with.
And James Levine, in his first performance at the Met since losing some two months of work because of back surgery, received a prolonged ovation from a welcoming audience when he appeared in the pit. He then drew a supple and bewitching performance from the great Met orchestra.
Still, the post-premiere discussion will probably focus on the acclaimed director Bartlett Sher’s fantastical production. Mr. Sher proved himself to opera buffs with his sleek and charming 2006 production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville,” in revival at the Met this season. “Hoffmann” is a far more challenging and elusive assignment.
For me, the staging is marred by moments of excess and busyness. And Mr. Sher may have done too much analysis of the work’s psychological subtexts. We get a little bit of everything in the stage imagery: pasty-faced characters out of a Kafka tale; waiters in bowler hats who could have stepped out of a Magritte painting; decadent, orgiastic Felliniesque scenes at the palace in Venice where the courtesan Giulietta presides; and more.
Yet Mr. Sher, working with the set designer Michael Yeargan and the costume designer Catherine Zuber, does get to the emotional core of the opera. This Hoffmann, dressed in a plain suit suggesting 1920s Eastern Europe, spends most of his days seated at a humdrum writing table, with a battered typewriter and a small desk lamp. That desk is where he belongs. At least that is the conviction of the Muse of Poetry, who in the guise of Nicklausse, Hoffmann’s devoted friend, follows him everywhere. The mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, singing with warmth and subtlety and looking alluringly androgynous, makes a trustworthy muse.
Luther’s tavern, next to the opera house where Stella is starring in “Don Giovanni,” is the only public place where Hoffmann is in his element. During the Prologue, egged on by the students who frequent the tavern and hang on his stories, Hoffmann sings an impish ballad about the dwarf Kleinzach, which Mr. Calleja dispatched with snappy energy and ringing top notes.
After the Prologue, during the next three acts, all flashbacks, Hoffmann tells the students the stories of his three disastrous romantic obsessions. Mr. Sher makes clear that these really are tall tales. Imagery and characters bleed from one story into the others. In the workshop of the eccentric inventor Spalanzani (the hearty tenor Mark Schowalter), where the guests assemble to see the demonstration of Olympia, his mechanical doll, voluptuous women dressed in nothing but G-strings and pasties wander through the audience. Two acts later they are seen again as occupants of the palace of the Venetian courtesan Giulietta.
It makes sense that Hoffmann’s stories would become jumbled in his mind, and in his telling. Still, the act featuring Olympia is quite a jumble. This mechanical doll is one of a whole product line of dolls, who strut about in garish ballet dresses. Some of the guests seem to have drifted in from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” The staging has style and wit, but it seems too busy, too much.
Ideally, Offenbach wanted one soprano to sing all four of Hoffmann’s love interests. Ms. Netrebko may have been wise to pass on Olympia. The role’s high-flying runs and roulades require a true, agile coloratura soprano, and this production has one in the petite Kathleen Kim, who excelled in Olympia’s showpiece aria, singing with pinpoint pitch, bright tone and impressive accuracy.
The mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova was a suitably dark-hued and sensual Giulietta, dressed incongruously in an 18th-century gown. The baritone Alan Held was husky-voiced, imposing and often chilling, portraying the four devilish villains who torment Hoffmann.
The tenor Alan Oke was delightful in four minor character roles, especially as Franz, the hapless servant in Antonia’s house who secretly longs to be a singer. (This was a far cry from his Met debut performance as Gandhi in Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha.”)
Whatever the vocal issues with Mr. Calleja’s Hoffmann, he withstood the pressure of singing this formidable role for the first time in a major new production at the Met, and saved the day. He needs to do more work with his voice, but he is a gifted and promising tenor.
There is an enormous controversy about the score of this opera. Offenbach died four months before the work’s 1881 premiere in Paris. None of the versions of the work that have appeared over the years, some of them corrupted, can be said to be authentic. I will have more to say on this question later. Mr. Levine, as is his prerogative, conducted a version that he and advisers at the Met fashioned from existing sources.
Whatever scholars of “Hoffmann” believe about the validity of the choices made here, the opera as presented had integrity and dramatic flow. If the production is not a revelation, the Met’s new “Hoffmann” is a musically gratifying and vividly theatrical staging of a haunting and, in its way, profound work.
“Les Contes d’Hoffmann” runs through Jan. 2 at the Metropolitan Opera House, LincolnCenter; (212) 362-6000, metopera.org.
No shortage of tales in this `Hoffmann' at the Met
By RONALD BLUM,
Conductor James Levine returned to the Metropolitan Opera after an absence of more than two months to recover from spine surgery to lead the company's new production of Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann)."
Indeed, there were a lot of tales in this "Hoffmann," in which director Bartlett Sher used Hoffmann's Jewish background and conversion to Catholicism as a starting point. Somehow it all worked out Thursday night and Calleja gave a dominating performance in a demanding lyric role.
Sher's dark new staging, which reflects the opera through the prism of Kafka and Fellini, will not be to everyone's liking. There are Venetian courtesans prancing about in nothing more than high heels, panties, pasties and jewelry. They looked like Vegas showgirls. Drunken bar revelers pretend they are dancing dwarfs who appear to be wearing Jewish prayer shawls. Throw in some clowns in white face with large red noses, various women in corsets and powdered wigs, and a few skeleton heads donning Carnival masks. At times, the famous barcarole resembled the orgy from Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."
Yet all the razzle-dazzle, which included five Olympias in pink ballet outfits who reappeared in the final act, didn't interfere with the tuneful music of Offenbach's final opera.
"Hoffmann" is problematic. The composer died before he could complete it, and there's no definitive version, with musicologists still discovering new sources. There hasn't even been agreement on the correct order of the acts.
The Met's current version, in use since 1993, places the Antonia act in the middle and the Giulietta act third. It includes Dapertutto's aria "Scintille, diamant (Sparkle, diamond)" and a septet, both added years after the opening. Musicologist Michael Kaye, who has been researching "Hoffmann" for almost 30 years, is upset the Met ignores his finds.
The basic plot, however, is mostly constant. Hoffmann, a poet, is after the opera singer Stella. He sings of his past loves — the mechanical doll Olympia, the singer Antonia and the courtesan Giulietta. Hoffmann's friend Nicklausse concludes in the epilogue that each is a part of one person: Stella.
Right from the Kleinzach aria in the prologue, Joseph Calleja showed off a tenor with distinctive coloring and pretty close to a full range. While there was some slight strain at the top in the final act, that could be attributed to the cold he has been combating.
Anna Netrebko (in a red flapper dress as Stella and a champagne-colored gown as Antonia) showed off shimmering high notes. Kathleen Kim (Olympia) got off to a balky start before settling in with a bright coloratura and comic acting as the doll that both won big applause. Mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova (Giulietta) seemed rather matronly.
Bartione Alan Held was elegant and slimy as the four villains — Lindorf, Coppelius, Dr. Miracle and Dapertutto. While he doesn't have the typical dark, booming sound associated with the roles, his French diction had some flair and he gave a menacing presence. Mezzo Kate Lindsey (Nicklausse), looking like an Edwardian character at times, had good range and did a humorous Olympia imitation.
Michael Todd Simpson, in his Met debut, was dashing as Schlemil. Mark Showalter looked like Uncle Fester as Spalanzani and Alan Oke was a cutup as Frantz. Dean Peterson (Luther and Crespel) wore an old-fashioned skullcap as Antonia's father that made him look like Tevye. Levine, bobbing in the pit as if his back had never bothered him, brought out intricate details from the orchestra.
The Met's previous production, directed by Otto Schenk, debuted in 1982 and was known most for designer Guenther Schneider-Siemssen's spectacular set for Spalanzani's workshop, a memorable collection of clocks and Rube Goldberg-like contraptions.
Michael Yeargen's set for the Olympia act didn't match up — it was more the fairground with a few knickknacks thrown in, such as a Fornasetti-style eye surrounded by the sun's flames — and was one of the night's chief disappointments. Crespel's home in Munich for the Antonia act was austere. Only the Venetian scene, with lights that formed a snazzy chandelier, really impressed.
Sher, a Tony Award winner who made his Met debut with a breezy "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" three years ago, was provocative without seeming forced. Catherine Zuber's costumes set the first two acts in the 1920s and the final act in 18th-century Europe. Odd, but it was that kind of night. That kind of opera.
There are seven more performances through Jan. 2, and the Dec. 19 matinee will be televised to theaters around the world in hi-definition.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/04/entertainment/e160914S78.DTL#ixzz0aHV0GoU2
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/04/entertainment/e160914S78.DTL
Conductor James Levine returns to work after surgery
James Levine has suffered a number of health problems
Conductor James Levine has returned to work at New York's Metropolitan Opera following a two-month break to recover from back surgery.
The 67-year-old, who is also musical director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had an operation to treat a herniated disc.
Levine conducted the first performance of a new production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman.
He was last at the podium in September before deciding to have surgery.
It is his third lay-off due to illness and injury in three years.
Levine's previous health problems have included the removal of a kidney in 2008 due to a malignant tumour.
In 2006, he suffered an injured shoulder after falling onto the stage during ovations, which left him sidelined for four months.
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Reviewed By: David Finkle · Dec 5, 2009 · New York
When the Met's sumptuous curtain rises for the third act of Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher's decidedly uneven new production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann, the Jacques Offenbach-Jules Barbier-Michael Carre dramatic opera, the audience rightfully gives out with a collective "aah."
Before them is designer Michael Yeargan's dark and glittering setting for an orgiastic 18th-century Venetian party. Among the guests are several female couples wearing scandalous scanties provided by Catherine Zuber and executing choreographer Dou Dou Huang's erotic legs-in-the-air splits, while Offenbach's famous barcarole "Belle nuit, o nuit d'amour" is intoned to mesmerizing effect. The sequence is the visual highlight -- and one of the many aural pleasures -- of this new production of the composer's last (and, many believe, unfinished) work.
Sher may have extrapolated from the adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's by-then-familiar tales that the German-Jewish Offenbach and collaborators were interested in using Hoffmann as a metaphor for the outsider Offenbach felt he was, but that idea does not comes across. Instead, the portrait presented is of an obtuse shambler who loves neither wisely nor well. As a result, Hoffmann's writer's calling appears to be more a retreat from unsuccessful relationships than an example of professional commitment, and the sheets of paper falling on several occasions like dead leaves from the fly begin to suggest a propensity for random scribbling instead of for controlled creativity. As the curtain falls on Hoffmann in his study, his muse is heading towards the wings -- which looks as if even she doesn't buy his devotion to art and has decided to walk out on him.
Moreover, some of Sher's directorial choices raise unanswered questions. Why in one scene do lithe chorines twirl umbrellas with eyes on them? (Is society meant to be watching sad outcast Hoffmann?) Why in another scene do scrims with bare trees on them descend, rise and descend again? (Is it a contemporary call for a greener planet?)
Still, there is much to praise in the work of conductor James Levine and a fine principal cast, led by Joseph Calleja as Hoffmann. Indeed, his tenor contains such an uncommonly warm vibrato that his occasional physical stiffness -- the left arm that lifts regularly and mechanically -- is easily forgiven. (It might even be accepted as characterization for an author more comfortable in the company of his pen than in the presence of people.)
Pint-sized Kathleen Kim is the doll Olympia, under whose charm Hoffmann falls, and her jerky movements are a delight. More significantly, her singing of "Les oiseaux dans la chamille" has the coloratura brilliance that wows audiences. Anna Netrebko as Antonia and Stella, two of the women for whom Hoffmann swoons, is in fine voice, as is Ekaterina Gubanova as Giulietta, the last object of Hoffmann's desperate affections.
Playing each of Hoffman's antagonists -- Lindorf, Coppelius, Dr. Miracle, and Dapertutto -- the towering Alan Held applies his baritone to sonorous, sinister effect. As the supposedly comic-relief servant Franz, Alan Oke (who also plays three other roles) sings with punch without eliciting many laughs. Only Kate Lindsey as the muse of poetry masquerading throughout as Hoffmann's friend Nicklausse fails to fill the hall. Too often, her lower register is barely able to register.
Metropolian Opera
FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
Premiere: 12. November 2009
November 13, 2009
So What Are You in For?
Patrice Chéreau's Buoyant From the House of the Dead
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. And so began Patrice Chéreau's achingly theatrical production of Leoš Janácek’s From the House of the Dead, in a Shakespearean tribute, darkness punctuated by a single match -- a prisoner lighting his cigarette -- our first glimpse of the Siberian prison that would be our reckoning point for the next hour (and some), where humility is all that keeps buoyant in the oppressive confines of the descending concrete walls.
Gelb frantically covered all his bases in the month leading-up to the premiere, speaking about the ensuing Czech opera from the insultingly lowbrow dailies to the heavy hitters & glossies, drumming up support for the opera that blazed a glorious comet-trail of success across Europe last year (and the year before that), leaving critics and Janácek-martyrs alike breathless from Pierre Boulez's conducting with Patrice Chéreau's coup d'theatre.
After the Luc Bondy Tosca scuffle that opened the Metropolitan Opera's 2009/10 season, where boos rained-down from the offended, excitable self-appointed arbiters of the Family Circle ring, Gelb (and the rest of the world) now had a scarily-sobering barometer of what the Metropolitan audiences considered avant garde. And frankly, if Bondy's calm-as-a-kitten Tosca was treated by NYC audiences like Calixto Bieito's fisting/S&M visions of proctological Regie, one should definitely worry about the well-being of Chéreau. So Gelb rode weary his House of the Dead warpath, proclaiming the Met's "theatrical renaissance", relying on free panels and local news promos to ingratiate Janácek to the people. Did all that exhausting work deliver a nice payload? Well, last night, OC witnessed one of the longest MET curtain calls that she's ever lingered for (c'mon...while we Milanese stick around for 20+ headline-breaking minutes of applause, those serious businessmen NY'ers rush out do their serious businessmen things). All in all, a nice reception for Patrice Chéreau's house debut.
And so last night premiered Leoš Janácek’s last opera, From the House of the Dead, never before staged in the MET's history. It's okay. There's a time and place for that strict, uncompromising Czech a$$hole. And that time is now...the lean, streamlined version from Chéreau's body-of-work that teasingly floats hope and morality millimeters away from Janácek’s harrowing score, love and pity closely intertwined. The opera is an assemblage of unsentimental, unflinching scenes from Dostoyevsky's book of the same name (without narrative thrust or clear protagonists) of his 4 years spent in a Siberian gulag. A poignant, cinematic treatment, including the English titles that were projected on the back of the scenery, fittingly like film noir.
As each prisoner enumerates their crimes, they no longer are the psychopathic criminals, and each becomes his own distinct character. As OC heard here at the Met Panel, Chéreau hired professional actors to mix with the singers to heighten his desired theatrical conventions. Railing against the powers that have locked them in, each prisoner is a distinct entity, uplifting and full of humility in the face of oppression. Here we have no hardened criminals resigned to do their time lifting weights and reading the bible (and getting crappy tattoos)...we have instead humble men, spurned on by survival and clutching to the last remnants of hope, whether it be a stuffed eagle that spirits the men to their imaginations or remembrance of landscapes past.
Chéreau's production team seamlessly wove an opera that transported the Metropolitan Opera audiences from the massive, sterile maw of that cosmopolitan stage to Vienna or Amsterdam or Aix-en-Provence (heck, even Milan where "Da una casa di morti" will premiere in March 2010).
Longtime Chéreau collaborator and French set designer Richard Peduzzi, who was responsible for that Tosca that ya'll hated so much (OMG *that's* not what an Italian church looks like!) erected large gray massive walls that opened and closed as the opera progressed; Associate director Thierry Thieû Niang choreographed the excellent prison secks pantomime, homage to the French ballet interludes so cherished in traditional opera; French costume designer Caroline de Vivaise had a very Max Ernst vision and color palette, perfectly visualized with every detail caressed; Lighting maestro Bertrand Couderc expertly fluctuated from creamy rose-tinged washes to golden afternoons to soul-baring, psychopathic whites.
Former MD of the the L.A. Phil Esa-Pekka Salonen made his house debut last night, presenting a score full of clarity and vibrant light, saddled with lush romanticism and a buoyancy that echoed Dostoevsky's book: cruel human trauma suffused with wit and an underlying sense of hope. For Esa-Pekka to carry off such a sound at the cavernous and impersonal auditorium of the MET was quite a skill indeed. An unforgiving, unflinching mastery, Esa-Pekka plowed ahead ruthlessly in a soaring, expressive dialog with his singers on-stage, never rushing never overshadowing.
Towering Swedish baritone Peter Mattei sang Shishkov, the prisoner with the most intricate past, effectively pushing his character through all the phases of remembrance and retribution. Czech tenor Stefan Margita as Filka/Luka sang effectively and cunningly, American tenor Kurt Streit as the psychotic Skuratov was a standout, with the remainder of the main characters -- British tenor Peter Hoare as Shapkin and bass-baritone Willard White as Gorianchikov -- wonderfully rounding-out the corps of political prisoners.
Are American opera audiences ready to accept what the Europeans/Brits so easy recognize -- that there exists in this scarily-big world production-driven performances and that the singers themselves don't always have to be the ticket-sellers? Let's hope that Chéreau effectively indoctrinates, prison secks included.
x
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/from-the-house-of-the-dead-the-directors-style/
November 10, 2009, 3:26 pm
‘From the House of the Dead’: The Director’s Style
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
To most culture-friendly Americans, Patrice Chéreau, the French director of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Janacek’s opera “From the House of the Dead,” is probably best known as a movie director with an eclectic, adventurous style and exotic tastes.
”Queen Margot,” a period soaper steeped in blood, lust and brocade, starring Isabelle Adjani, would probably be the first title to spring to mind. But Mr. Chéreau also causes a bit of a ruckus with his movie adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel “Intimacy.” In that intense drama about a highly erotic but emotionally arid relationship, the actors Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox engaged in sex acts filmed with an unusual bluntness and clarity; no panning to flickering candles or quick cuts to trains entering tunnels here. And speaking of trains, Mr. Chéreau’s “Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train,” about the complicated lives of Parisians heading out of town for a funeral, is also among his more highly regarded works.
But to opera aficionados, Mr. Chéreau’s film oeuvre will be of secondary concern. More than 30 years after it causes a sensation at the 1976 Bayreuth Festival, Mr. Chéreau’s ground-breaking staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle is still considered a high point – and an inflection point — of opera directing.
When he undertook the project, Mr. Chéreau was a French theater wunderkind in his early 30s who had garnered attention of Parisian critics while he was still in high school. He had only directed two previous operas, the notably lighter fare of Rossini and Offenbach. Perhaps it was the sheer audacity of his hiring by Wolfgang Wagner, who was then running the festival, that rankled with the critics who expressed outrage at the production’s premiere. In subsequent years, as the production was revived and revised, outrage was far outstripped by respect and reverence.
Seen today on DVD (the production was filmed in 1980), Mr. Chéreau’s Ring hardly seems the kind of radical, interrogatory production that regularly can be seen on the stages of European opera houses today. (And which some Metropolitan Opera traditionalists may irrationally fear will become the house style under general manager Peter Gelb.) It appears tame indeed compared to the light sabers and other oddities described by Anthony Tommasini in Achim Freyer’s new production of the Ring for the Los Angeles Opera. The text is followed more or less respectfully. Brunnhilde walks with spear, breastplate and metal headdress.
Mr. Chéreau’s primary innovation was updating the time of the opera to the Industrial Revolution – roughly Wagner’s own era. In the years that have followed, and perhaps due to the production’s worldwide acclaim, setting a work in the era in which it was composed (as opposed to the time specified in the libretto) has become something of a cliché of opera production, a standard choice for directors with no fresh ideas of their own.
What still stands out as arresting is the sheer vitality of the acting. Watching opera on television can be a stultifying experience, but Mr. Chéreau’s Ring is made compelling by the intensely focused, emotionally vibrant performances. Catching opera performances on film and video can sometimes reveal the melodramatic clichés and stock generalities that can affront – or amuse – people used to the more subtle standards of first-rate theater. But the singers in this production seem to be fully inhabiting their characters, bringing Wagner’s epic family drama to life so vividly that it sometimes almost verges on the pulpy. It’s the only time I’ve ever sat down to watch an opera on television and felt an unmistakable craving for popcorn.
Secret Weapon of Czech Opera’s Velvet Revolution
JUST as a diva regards her Metropolitan Opera debut as proof that she has arrived, a Met premiere confers on a work a lasting seal of approval. On Thursday, that honor will fall to Leos Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” based on Dostoyevsky’s chronicle of a Siberian gulag. Adding cachet are a star director, Patrice Chéreau, and a star conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, both making Met debuts. The international ensemble is led by the Slovak Stefan Margita as a sadistic confidence man, the American Willard White as a political detainee, the American Kurt Streit as one impenitent killer and the Swede Peter Mattei as another.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Concert performances of the piece at the New York Philharmonic in 1983 and the American stage premiere at the New York City Opera in 1990 were sung in an English translation by Yveta Synek Graff, a native of Prague. The Met will perform it in the original Czech with titles, as cosmopolitan audiences now expect. To Ms. Graff, who declines to give her age, the contemporary fashion for multinational, original-language productions of Czech masterpieces by Janacek, Dvorak and Smetana is the vindication of a long-cherished dream that she, perhaps more than anyone else, has fought to make a reality.
Ms. Graff’s singing translation of “From the House of the Dead” received high marks from the Czech native Rafael Kubelik, who conducted the performances at the New York Philharmonic, sweating every expressive detail of sound and meaning. Her translations of other Janacek operas including “The Cunning Little Vixen” and “The Makropulos Case” have been used from Seattle to Sydney, by way of New York and London. (All her translations are collaborations with the editor Robert T. Jones.)
To Ms. Graff’s mind opera in translation smacks of provincialism, but then so does knee-jerk casting of singers from the homeland. Though her objective of original-language productions by top international casts was clear from the start, she has often had to pursue her Velvet Revolution by indirection: better Czech opera in English or with imported casts than no Czech opera at all. As a translator, transliterator and full-service subject expert, she has been in steady demand since the early 1980s. Over one 12-month period, eight productions kept Ms. Graff on the road for 48 weeks. “That,” Ms. Graff said in an interview this summer, “was too much.”
“When I first spoke up for Czech opera in Czech with non-Czech singers, everyone laughed at me,” she continued, showing a visitor around the study of an upper-story Park Avenue apartment, her home since 1964. Anticipating a move to California, she was organizing her scores, recordings, archival photographs, signed posters and other memorabilia for transfer to the JuilliardSchool, where they will be a priceless resource for future generations. Her transliterations in Czech scores, with parallel translations into English, have already served waves of non-Czech singers and will continue do so. (Digitization awaits.)
“Everyone insisted that no foreigner can learn Czech,” Ms. Graff said. “But audiences want the excitement of something new. Artists too. You can’t do ‘La Bohème’ all the time.” Her favorite Cinderella story is that of Renée Fleming, who broke out internationally as the lovely but lethal water sprite in Dvorak’s gothic fairy tale “Rusalka.”
How hard is it for nonnatives to learn Czech roles? Phonetically, the pristine, Italianate vowels are a singer’s delight. What hurts are the jaw-crushing consonant clusters in between.
The American tenor Brandon Jovanovich is rehearsing Janacek’s “Katya Kabanova” with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, his third Czech assignment in two seasons. “I have to get the language in my body before I can put the meaning on top,” he said recently. “But now that I’ve broken the ice, I want to do more. With every role the language gets easier. And the music is gorgeous.”
The diction coach for the Chicago production is Ms. Graff, who sets the bar high. At the same time she is pragmatic. “If you want perfect Czech,” she said, “go to Prague. But you won’t get great voices.” You won’t get Jessye Norman, Karita Mattila, Catherine Malfitano, Patricia Racette, Ben Heppner or Aleksandrs Antonenko, all artists she has worked with in the West.
Ms. Graff’s association with the Met began in 1985 with Janacek’s “Jenufa,” presented in her translation, and continued uninterrupted through every Met production of Czech opera, whether in English or Czech, concluding with the revival of “Rusalka” in March. “From the House of the Dead” is being mounted without her. In the rehearsal studio the Czech language coach Carol Isaac is riding herd on the cast to dispatch consonants ahead of the beat and land vowels exactly on the beat.
Despite her Czech heritage, Ms. Graff developed her expertise in Czech opera only as an émigré. The daughter of the Czech man of letters and political activist Emil Synek, she was spirited to Paris with her mother, Eugenia Budlovska (before her marriage a celebrated actress) in 1947, supposedly to join him on a diplomatic mission. Mother and daughter arrived with two suitcases each, as if for a short trip, but Synek had foreseen the imminent Communist takeover, and the family never returned. The young Yveta grew up in Paris amid artists’ balls and in the public eye as the ubiquitous Kodak Girl, a Continental Eloise, with hints of a “Roman Holiday” in her future. In the late 1950s, at the invitation of the State Department and still in her teens, she crossed the Atlantic on the Île de France for a look around America and never left.
In New York, as previously in Paris, Ms. Graff studied voice with eminent teachers who were more ambitious for her than she was for herself. After her early first marriage and motherhood dashed their hopes of grooming Ms. Graff to be a second Callas, she happily settled into the New York social whirl, cultivating a glittering salon.
She found her calling when an uncle in Czechoslovakia sent her the score of Smetana’s heroic opera “Dalibor,” which Eve Queler put on in Czech at Carnegie Hall in 1977 with the Opera Orchestra of New York. Though the principals were Czech, the chorus was American, coached by Ms. Graff, whose second husband, the banker F. Malcolm Graff, was on Ms. Queler’s board. In 1980, with Ms. Graff’s help, the San Francisco Opera made up for the embarrassment of a recent “Jenufa” in German by reviving the opera in Czech, the first international house outside Czechoslovakia to do so.
From the first Ms. Graff has understood that great performers need to shine and that authenticity is not all. So if Ms. Fleming likes to dress up Rusalka’s universally beloved “Song to the Moon” with a long-held, shimmering high B flat, she has Ms. Graff’s whole-hearted support. When Ms. Fleming was preparing to record the opera for Decca with the Janacek specialist Charles Mackerras, this might have been a flash point.
“Yveta waged that battle before I arrived,” Ms. Fleming said recently. “It saved me a lot of wear and tear.”
Mr. Mackerras has been a champion of Czech opera since his student days in Prague in the late 1940s. “When the song is sung as an excerpt, it’s traditional and wonderful for the soprano to hold the B flat for a very long time, like Puccini,” Mr. Mackerras said from his home on Elba. “In context, Dvorak meant it to be sung shorter, in tempo. I suppose he just didn’t know how popular the aria would become.” So the ending was recorded as written, for Mr. Mackerras’s private enjoyment, and à la Puccini, for everyone else.
Mr. Mackerras also conducted the Paris premiere of “From the House of the Dead” in 1988, sung in Czech, with Ms. Graff’s French titles. The production was by Volker Schlöndorff, director of the Oscar-winning film “The Tin Drum.” The aerialist Philippe Petit appeared as the Eagle, symbol of hope.
Unlike most major Czech operas, this one dispenses with complex heroines, banishing the female voice almost completely, while three male principals, in a sort of trance, narrate their brutal crimes. There is no action in any conventional sense.
After a rehearsal Mr. Chéreau put his finger on the work’s inherent contradictions. “Maybe it’s not that nothing happens but that so much happens,” he said. “In spite of the forbidding title the book is full of primal energies, and that’s what Janacek gives us in the music. It’s violent. It’s alive. It’s not about desperation. It’s not about death at all.”
The opera world remembers Mr. Chéreau as the enfant terrible who shot to fame in 1976 with his centennial staging of Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. Much as the Met might hope for another such bombshell, this time the cat is out of the bag. Mr. Chéreau’s well-traveled “House of the Dead” was filmed in 2007 in Aix-en-Provence, France, for Deutsche Grammophon, conducted by Pierre Boulez, his partner in the “Ring.”
Ms. Graff has seen the DVD but is suspending judgment on Mr. Chéreau’s production until she can see the production onstage. As it happens, however, the Met’s opening night conflicts with her rehearsal schedule for “Katya Kabanova” in Chicago. With her revolution an accomplished fact, there is always more to do.
Katia Ricciarelli: La festa per i 40 anni di carriera
http://ilrestodelcarlino.ilsole24ore.com/rovigo/cultura/2009/11/05/257184-katia_ricciarelli.shtml
LONDON
Royal Opera House Covent Garden
Carmen
3. Oktober 2009
Carmen at Covent Garden
People are in for a shock if they think that top-price seats at the Royal Opera always cost £30. They certainly had their money’s worth of vocal and visual thrills here, even if Francesca Zambello’s conventional staging (first seen in 2006) doesn’t exactly offer radical new insights into Bizet’s femme fatale.
Elina Garanca’s Carmen dominates every scene. It helps that the young Latvian looks stunning. Here’s one Carmen whose ability to reduce strong men to jelly is totally credible. But she also commands a voice that’s rich and vibrant from lowest note to highest, and capable of hurling out a contemptuous challenge with blazing power. What she lacks is a streak of earthy wildness. She bumps and grinds her Habanera sexily enough, but you never quite feel that there’s a tiger inside this cool, controlled and rather modern miss.
London Opera Stages Carmen
The world’s most popular opera appears once more in Francesca Zambello’s lively production to atmospheric designs by Tanya McCallin, first seen in 2006. Taking the leads this time around are the glamorous rising star Latvian mezzo Elina Garanca as Carmen and Roberto Alagna as her fated lover and nemesis, Don Jose.
Ildebrando d’Arcangelo returns as the macho bullfighter Escamillo and Chinese soprano Liping Zhang, counterbalancing the flamboyant gypsy, sings good-girl Micaela. Bertrand de Billy, particularly admired as an interpreter of the music of his native France, makes a welcome return to Covent Garden to conduct this revival. -- www.roh.org.uk
Roberto Alagna on returning to The Royal Opera for a revival of Carmen
'I like to have real collaboration, so that we are reacting to each other, then it can be different every night'
29 September 2009
Tenor Roberto Alagna is one of opera's biggest talents and most famous stars. Ever since his Royal Opera debut in 1992, he has been a regular visitor to Covent Garden and has enjoyed a warm relationship in this country with critics and public alike
I met with him after a day of rehearsals for the revival of Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen which is due to open on 3 October. Alagna was in high spirits, 10 days into the rehearsal period which, he says, is going extremely well. In a demonstration of generosity towards his colleagues which seems typical of him, he immediately turned the attention to Elina Garanca, who is singing Carmen, of whom Alagna said 'She is amazing. I think she will be the most complete Carmen I have ever seen and a lot of people will be very surprised at her, because they are expecting her to be a little cold. There is an electricity between Garanca and me, we have a beautiful connection. Elina has a noble attitude which makes her attractive – you are obliged to be in love with her, and the voice is like honey and gold. She has class, with a beautiful feminine manner, but she can also be very strong, like a man. She is very magnetic, we have great chemistry on stage.'
Roberto Alagna: 'Opera was my secret love'
His life story is as colourful and tear-jerking as any of the roles he's sung. So will the heart-throb tenor ever find serenity? The Big Interview by Christina Patterson Friday, 2 October 2009
DRESDEN
Semper Oper
La Traviata
2. Oktober 2009
Viel ist nicht zu sagen. Es hat nicht geklappt. Das Züricher Zukunftsteam, Andreas Homoki und Fabio Luisi, hat in Dresden keine zukunftsweisende Inszenierung von Verdis 'La traviata' geliefert. Chor, Solisten und Statisten als grelle Partyschickeria zu verkleiden und ein paar Anspielungen auf mehr oder weniger bekannte, lebende und tote, Klatschspaltenfüller dabei zu haben, macht noch kein zeitgemäßes Musiktheater aus, wenn am Ende doch die üblichen, rampennahen Klischees überwiegen.
In Andreas Homokis Dresdner Neuinszenierung, vorwiegend vor einer roten Wellblechwand von Frank Philipp Schlößmann angesiedelt, muss Violetta Valéry als hilfloses Abbild einer Amy Winehouse-Idee chargieren. Alfredo ist ein netter junger Typ von nebenan, trägt Jeans und ein kariertes Hemd und ist aus unerklärlichen Gründen so naiv, auf die biedere Erpressung seines gewalttätigen Papas hereinzufallen und um der Zukunft seiner graumäusigen Schwester willen die Frau, die er zu lieben meint, fallen zu lassen. Über deren Vergangenheit hat sich der Papa im Tagesblatt mit den großen Buchstaben kundig gemacht.
Wenn hier gefeiert wird, wird nicht getrunken und getanzt, es wird gekokst und gebumst, man spielt blinde Kuh, und ein paar Statisten in mehr oder weniger appetitlichen Unterhosen verbreiten die Erotik erkalteter Ofenrohre. Geschmack hat man nicht, aber Knete in Hülle und Fülle, man lässt sich bewachen von dunklen Security-Boys. Na prima. Gesellschaftkritik, zwanzig Jahre nach dem Mauerfall ist es wieder da, das gute alte Theater mit dem Holzhammer und dem Zeigefinger, der uns den Blick weist, die Bösen ja zu erkennen. Das geht nicht gut, es endet tödlich, für Emy-Violetta Winehouse-Valéry, die sich eine Drogentherapie nicht mehr leisten kann.
Verdis Musik rettet nur bedingt, was die Szene versagt. Zunächst brauchen die Damen und Herren der Staatskapelle unter der Leitung von Fabio Luisi ziemlich lange im ohnehin kurzen Vorspiel, bis sie zum Zusammenspiel finden. Dann bleibt es bei sehr stark zurückgenommenen Begleitfunktionen, der Dirigent hat hart zu koordinieren, hält am Ende aber doch immer wieder zusammen, was nicht immer gänzlich zueinander will.
Rebecca Nelsen als Violetta findet erst im letzten Bild, wenn sie frei ist von den Verkleidungsklischees, zu wahrhaft berührenden Tönen. Wookyung Kim, nach anfänglichen Unsicherheiten, wird als Alfredo zum gesanglichen Ereignis des Abends. Roberto Servile bleibt mit seiner rauen und angestrengten Tongebung der Partie des Giorgio Germont so gut wie alles schuldig. Unterschiedlich die Leistungen der Ensemblemitglieder, markante Rollenporträts lässt die Regie nicht zu. Pablo Assante stellt sich mit dieser Premiere als neuer Dresdner Chordirektor vor.
LONDON
Royal Opera House Covent Garden
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
29. September 2009
Note to the Royal Opera House booers: grow up
An intense evening of Wagner at the Royal Opera House was marred by the booing of the production team during the curtain call. Why do audiences insist on behaving like three-year-olds?
In no other artform do artists – and it is always directors and designers – get such a hard time. I've never heard a composer booed, or an actor, or a pop musician (though my pop colleagues have just mentioned the hurling of bottles of piss as an unpleasant possibility – not that I want to give opera audiences any ideas).
Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden
Never before have I seen a Royal Opera production greeted with a standing ovation and then a fortissimo volley of boos. The first I understand. That was for Nina Stemme, whose Isolde was magnificent: as powerful, volatile and tellingly nuanced in the Liebestod as she had been five hours earlier, raging like a street-fighter against the humiliations piled on her by the self-obsessed Tristan.
But the boos when the director Christof Loy took his bow? I’m as reactionary as the next old fogey, but I was astounded by the hostility. Yes, it’s a modern-dress staging. No, there’s no ship or castle. For 90 per cent of the time there’s nothing on stage except a cheap table and two chairs.
Nina Stemme on The Royal Opera's new production of Tristan und Isolde
'There are so many interesting questions to ask about these characters and roles.'
13 September 2009
Swedish soprano Nina Stemme will finally bring her Isolde to Covent Garden. This is her first ROH outing in a Wagner role – she's previously appeared here as Amelia in Un ballo in maschera – but many British Wagnerians will be familiar with her Isolde from her two appearances in the role at Glyndebourne, where she headed the first-ever Wagner production at the famous summer festival. The 2007 revival was filmed for Opus Arte and released on DVD to universal acclaim.
LOS ANGELES
SIEGFRIED
Premiere: 26. September 2009
Regie: Achim Freyer
Dirigent: James Conlon
John Treleaven als Siegfried
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Bravos and boos greet Freyer's 'Siegfried' in L.A.
Review: The German director's 'Ring' cycle continues at L.A. Opera.
By TIMOTHY MANGAN
Perhaps the easiest way to explain director Achim Freyer's brilliant and unusual vision of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle (and people do seem to want it explained) is to say that it's like a dream made solid and public, costumed, staged and lit up. Everything is out of whack, misshapen and askew, but perfectly recognizable; that the visions, actions and symbols have significance is apparent, even if you can't always put your finger on their exact significance, just as in a dream.
More important though, I think, is that Freyer puts the viewer – the sympathetic viewer, that is – into a dream state. The first act of "Siegfried," which opened at Los Angeles Opera Saturday afternoon, is what? Four hours? Or does it just seem that way? Saturday, it went by for this viewer in a flash. Freyer had put me into a stunned trance.
The director's pacing is beautifully matched with Wagner's. It's slow, but also action-packed. Faceless figures march glacially about, sometimes carrying things (such as Siegfried's magic sword, Notung, here florescent, or a giant hammer, symbol of Mime's smithy), sometimes not. A thin blade of light moves slowly across the scrim fronting the stage, like a second hand marking the eon.
At the same time, as Wagner's leitmotifs fly past, as a character mentions something, the flexibility of Freyer's staging allows him to toss in references to them right and left. Siegfried talks of seeing his own image reflected in water, and out walks a second Siegfried, who faces the first Siegfried, then wanders off.
With this visual/theatrical language, Freyer can foreshadow events and recall them, just as Wagner does in the music, or as Homer Simpson does in flashback or daydream. The sequence of the riddles in Act One is a case in point. As Wotan and Mime exchange questions, the stage revolving clockwise and back, to the rear of the raked stage, up high, we see what they're talking about -- two giant puppets fighting over the ring, one decapitating the other, or a parade of Alberich in gold top hat, smoking a cigar, feeling dandy, and the Nibelungs. With a reference to Valhalla, up floats a little castle, with a little Wotan atop it, waving at us.
Yes, Freyer has a sense of humor, even in Wagner. Even as he puts us into the dream, he allows us to see the artifice, most of it wonderfully low tech. The flames surrounding Brünnhilde in her sleep are just tissue paper on sleds, pulled aside when Siegfried parts the blaze. Freyer's costumes, co-created with his daughter, are all symbolic, done in a kind of comic book Picasso style. Siegfried, ostensibly the hero, but really as dumb as a boulder, wears fur pants, a shock of blond dreadlocks, and a stack of blue, steroidal muscles. Why blue? Because he is innocent of fear and innocent of love. When he finds both, in the form of Brünnhilde, his muscles turn red with blood.
It all unwinds atop a severely raked stage, a turntable in the middle, florescent lines of perspective running this way and that. The platforms atop which the singers expound are numbered or lettered. There are projections on the front scrim, and in the back. But always, the picture is envisioned as a whole, an entire widescreen canvas in motion. A film of this production could do it no justice, unless you sat a camera in the back of the orchestra and just let it run.
People are hard on Wagnerian singers. It seems they have to reach an ideal, or be considered failures. As Siegfried, John Treleaven was no ideal – his voice lacks a certain heft and beauty – but he used his resources well, sang with intelligence and variety, had stamina aplenty. In short, he traced the terrain of the part instead of merely bellowing it.
Graham Clark introduced a wonderfully comic Mime who spit and rasped his lines delightfully. Vitalij Kowaljow, back as The Wanderer (Wotan), proved as eloquent and imposing as ever, all creamy power. Linda Watson, as Brünnhilde, has the impressive Wagnerian resources required, yet relied mostly on their plenitude alone. Oleg Bryjak trumpeted effectively as Alberich. In smaller roles, Eric Halvarson (Fafner), Stacey Tappan (Woodbird) and Jill Grove (Erda) all impressed.
James Conlon and the L.A. Opera Orchestra come up a little short of the breathtaking power and sheen of perfect Wagnerians, but with a new cover on the pit, their sound comes vividly into the hall and they play with great sensitivity and purpose.
Cheers and ovations greeted the performers, one and all, but when Freyer took the stage there were boos and bravos. Proves nothing much, probably, except that one man's dream is another's nightmare. Also, that some people don't recognize pure genius when they see it.
September 27, 2009 | 3:33 pm
When indefatigable Los Angeles Opera music director James Conlon began his engrossing pre-performance talk before “Siegfried” on Saturday, a blazing midday sun was directly overhead at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. By the time he finished conducting the long opera, day was done. The sky had reddened but not brilliantly enough to compete with the glow lingering from director Achim Freyer’s carnival of light inside or from Wagner’s music.
Los Angeles Opera’s ring around the “Ring” has come to the third opera of the tetralogy and the one most challenging to make convincing on stage. For five hours, a know-nothing hunk attempts to figure out a thing or two. Take “Siegfried” out of context, and you might think that testosterone is all that is needed to master the world.
Yet there are marvels in this opera. Nature purifies. Wotan, the self-centered ruler of universe, achieves enlightenment, understanding the cyclic makeup of existence and ceding power. Love emboldens Siegfried and his new bride, Brünnhilde, to laugh, live, bless the light and vow to protect the environment.
L.A. Opera has come down on the side of marvels. Its “Siegfried” is not without problems (what “Siegfried” is?), but it is wonderful. Freyer's "Ring" is singular spectacle, part circus, part eccentric art project, part light show, part historical panoply and part ineffable philosophical exercise. And the company’s $32 million investment in it clearly is beginning to pay off.
Freyer received boos Saturday, just as the German artist had for his earlier "Ring" productions of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre." But he also got cheers, and they were adamant. Traditional Wagnerians have reason to be bewildered. Those of us who have admired Freyer’s grotesqueries for many years have equal reason to be bewildered. It all boils to how much you value bewilderment.
Freyer envisions this opera as a sort of go-East-young-man pageant of penetration. The first act begins with characters on a racetrack, with a signpost giving the direction of Ost (German for east). Siegfried forges an invincible sword, which he uses to slaughter Mime (the dwarf who raises him) and the dragon Fafner (who guards the hoard of gold and magic ring) and shatter Wotan's spear. Siegfried's ultimate incursion is into the fire-surrounded mountain where the former Valkyrie and now mortal Brünnhilde sleeps.
Every character in this production is weird and full of symbols, some easier to read than others. Siegfried is a clown. He has Harpo Marx’s yellow hair, Jack LaLanne’s midriff (comic book muscles in violet that turn red with the discovery of sex) and pants of bear-hide.
I won’t ruin the delightful surprise dragon, but much of this odd crowd we’ve seen before. The dwarfs, Alberich and Mime, wear masks, forcing them to convey expression exclusively through voice and body language. A woodbird, who tells Siegfried what’s what, is here part of Wotan. Erda, the primal Earth mother, and her daughter Brünnhilde share the same outlandish Afro, although their figures are pneumatic in different ways. The hand-painted costumes designed by the director and his daughter, Amanda Freyer, are magnificent works of art.
The lighting amazes. Siegfried’s sword is a glowing blue tube, which can change colors. The stage is littered with other light tubes on a large turntable, and they are also are used like batons by a troupe of a dozen actors in black body suits.
These light tubes (which are improvements over earlier version thanks to new flexible LED strips and an inventive L.A. Opera shop) are also used by lighting designer Brian Gales in color choreography with Freyer’s projections on front and back scrims to create a three-dimensional wonderland of luminosity.
Heavy costumes, the steeply raked and moving turntable as well as flashing lights are all obstacles for singers. Furthermore, Freyer provides little in the way of sound reinforcing surfaces. This is not, essentially, a singer’s “Ring,” which is one more upset to traditionalists. But then the Chandler is not an acoustically apt space for Wagnerians, who happen to be an endangered species, anyway.
John Treleaven and Linda Watson, who had not been impressive in the company’s “Tristan und Isolde” in 2008, pretty much came through Saturday. Treleaven compensates for lack of projection with a lyricism that is an attractive quality in a heldentenor. Siegfried is an impossible role. After wearing himself out, a singer is faced with a half-hour duet with Brünnhilde, who is fresh as a daisy.
Treleaven’s exhaustion showed by the end, but Watson was considerate and did not upstage him. The soprano, who had had pitch problems in “Walküre,” was more secure here. Both singers seemed to have risen to the occasion.
Graham Clark was a marvelous Mime, funny and almost sympathetic. The scene between Vitalij Kowaljow’s Wanderer (Wotan come to earth) and Jill Grove’s Erda was powerful and deeply moving. Oleg Bryjak, a new Alberich, was dark and nasty. Eric Halfvarson’s Fafner, the dragon, was loudly and effectively amplified. Stacey Tappan was a gorgeous-sounding Woodbird.
Conlon, who conducted a lovingly spacious performance, has improved the pit. For earlier “Ring” productions, it had been covered in light-absorbing material that also seemed to suck up sound. Now partly opened, the arrangement allowed the orchestra much more presence. That means the orchestra sounds muffled only when Conlon, in consideration for his singers, holds back.
With each “Ring” opera, L.A. Opera grows taller.
-- Mark Swed
"Siegfried," Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17 and 17; 2 p.m. Oct. 4 and 11; $20-$260; (213) 972-8001. Running time 4 hours, 50 minutes.
NEW YORK
Metropolitan Opera
TOSCA
21. September 2009
Opera review: New 'Tosca' opens Metropolitan Opera season
A new Met “Tosca” was something to look forward to. Franco Zeffirelli’s imposing quarter-century-old production had been a tourist attraction for long enough. This time the company turned to Luc Bondy, a thoughtful if rarely controversial (by European standards) Swiss director, and Mattila, one of the most striking singing actresses of the current generation. The Finnish soprano had sung the title role only once before, three years ago in Helsinki.
It’s a New Met. Get Over It.
THE METROPOLITAN OPERA opened its 126th season on Monday — Peter Gelb’s third as general manager but the first over which he has had complete control — with Puccini’s “Tosca,” one of the sturdiest and most beloved war horses in the operatic stable. This was very good news if you were the sort of traditionalist Met fan who could happily watch the old Italian repertory — “Tosca,” “Turandot,” “Madama Butterfly” — over and over again, and are not looking forward to offerings later this season like Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” an almost plotless opera set in a Siberian labor camp, or “The Nose,” Shostakovich’s adaptation of a story about a man who doesn’t have one.
On the other hand, the Met’s new “Tosca,” directed by Luc Bondy and designed by Richard Peduzzi, mothballed the nearly 25-year-old Franco Zeffirelli production, which though baroquely overstuffed was immensely popular with audiences.
A Chorus of Boos and a Few Cheers for ‘Tosca’ From Readers
Last night, Luc Bondy’s new production of “Tosca” was greeted by an outpouring of boos at the Metropolitan Opera. Whether they were present at the performance or not, our readers also had a strong reaction to Mr. Bondy’s staging and its reception. Here is just a sampling of their varied reactions.
Boos for the Met's new 'Tosca' weren't off-base
Just because the world is devolving toward the fashionably gothic, does the Metropolitan Opera have license to reflect that with its seedy new Tosca?
Tosca's Banked Fires
If the Metropolitan Opera wanted to replace Franco Zeffirelli's iconic and hyperreal production of Puccini's "Tosca" with a concept-driven piece of European Regietheater, why didn't it go the whole way? Swap Mr. Zeffirelli's exact replica Rome-in-1800 locations (the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle with every statue in place) for the moon, maybe. Put the diva Tosca in leather and have her fight back against the villainous police chief Scarpia. Shake up the audience's preconceptions and really get a reaction. Instead, director Luc Bondy and set designer Richard Peduzzi, both making their Met debuts, offered a timid feint toward modernity and a few minimally provocative touches that added up to a tepid version of "Tosca"-as-usual.
LONDON
Royal Opera House Covent Garden
DON CARLOS
15. September 2009
Interview mit Jonas Kaufmann anlässlich seines Debuts als Don Carlos in London
An interview with Jonas Kaufmann
Apart from the great Fritz Wunderlich, it's unusual to have a teutonic singer who reaches much beyond Wagner, Mozart and Strauss, which makes the achievements of Jonas Kaufmann all the greater
Interview mit Marianne Cornetti anlässlich ihres Debuts als Eboli in „Don Carlos“ in London
Mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti on her Royal Opera debut in Don Carlo
When Sonia Ganassi had to back out of The Royal Opera's revival of Verdi's Don Carlo due to pregnancy, it can't have been easy to find a replacement that would suit such a high-profile cast. Jonas Kaufmann as Carlo, Simon Keenlyside as Posa and Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo are arguably unsurpassable on the current opera scene in their roles, and the luxury casting continues right down to Sir John Tomlinson's Grand Inquisitor and Robert Lloyd's Monk.
But in the end, no less an artist than Marianne Cornetti has stepped into the breach as Princess Eboli. The American mezzo has conquered all the world's major houses in recent years, with appearances in the big Verdi roles at the Met, La Scala and Vienna, and her Covent Garden debut as Eboli is timely to say the least.
Kritik
Don Carlo at Covent Garden
The German tenor Jonas Kaufmann is now the eponymous Prince, whose search both for love (hopelessly misdircted towards his stepmother, Queen Elisabeth) and a vocation (haplessly exploited by his much cannier chum, the Marquis of Posa), is destined to end in disaster. And it is Kaufmann’s achievement not just to sing with such a thrilling range of vocal colour and pliancy but to give this double tragedy such a personal slant.
This revival is the Royal Opera at its best.
Brüssel, Théâtre La Monnaie
Händel: Semele
Premiere: 8. September 2009
Regie: Zhang Huan / Dirigent: Christophe Rousset
Händel, China und die Internationale
Universelle Menschlichkeit: Eine multikulturelle "Semele" an der Brüsseler Oper.Sicher, schon der vor 250 Jahren gestorbene Sachse, der als berühmtester Komponist Europas den Briten meist auf griechisch-römischen Mythen basierende italienische Oper schmackhaft machte, wusste, was es mit kultureller Globalisierung auf sich hat. Doch was eben am Brüsseler Théâtre La Monnaie Premiere hatte und als erste komplett in China aufgeführte Barockoper nächstes Jahr auch das Publikum in Peking und Shanghai beglücken soll, darf man sicher schon jetzt das szenisch ambitionierteste Projekt im Händel-Jahr nennen.
Römischer Gott als chinesischer Drache
Zhang Huan inszeniert Händels "Semele" in Brüssel
Der chinesische Aktionskünstler Zhang Huan hat sich erstmals an eine Oper gewagt: Für Händels "Semele" ließ er in der Brüsseler Oper La Monnaie einen 450 Jahre alten chinesischen Tempel aufbauen. Die Geschichte um den Gott Jupiter und seine Geliebte bebilderte er mit chinesischen folkloristischen Elementen.
Shanghai I Shall Adore
And so the season begins. Tonight in Brussels, the Theatre de la Monnaie will see the first major Chinese opera co-production directed by a Chinese artist. Zhang Huan, a New York-based star of the contemporary Chinese art scene, who has never directed an opera before, will take on Handel’s "Semele," with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques seeing to the musical end of the equation.
Zhang Huan: from baroque to Beijing
A Chinese artist is giving Handel an Eastern twist. Zhang Huan eplains why he is ready to try something new.
At first glance, it’s completely baffling. Why should anyone think that Handel’s ironic and sophisticated mythological comedy of adultery, Semele, should be entrusted to a Chinese artist of Buddhist persuasion, best known for his massive, often grotesque sculptures and performance art installations frequently involving feats of extreme physical endurance? But that is precisely what Linda Wong Davies has done, and next month she will find out whether what might look like a meaningless culture clash has turned out to be an inspiration worthy of Diaghilev.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/6043643/Zhang-Huan-from-baroque-to-Beijing.html
Luzern:
"Wozzeck" von Manfred Gurlitt
Premiere: 6. September 2009
Regie: Vera Nemirova Dirigent: Mark Foster
Der andere "Wozzeck": Gurlitt in Luzern
Das wäre einmal was für das "Millionenspiel": Welche Oper nach dem berühmten Fragment von Büchner wurde am 22. April 1926 uraufgeführt. Richtig, der "Wozzeck". Und von wem? Natürlich von Alban Berg. Und schon ist die wahrscheinlich bis dato erkleckliche Gewinnsumme dahin. Denn Berg führte seinen "Wozzeck" vier Monate vorher erstmals auf. Im April 1926 jedoch gab es im Stadttheater Bremen ein heute fast vergessenes Werk zu erleben: "Wozzeck" von Manfred Gurlitt. Gurlitt und Berg wussten vermutlich nichts von ihren jeweiligen Operninteressen, der Stoff lag damals wohl einfach in der Luft. Gurlitts Variante wurde durch den Welterfolg Bergs indes rasch vergessen.
Die vergessene Oper
Der 1926 uraufgeführte «Wozzeck» des deutschen Komponisten Manfred Gurlitt ist zu Unrecht in Vergessenheit geraten, wie die Luzerner Inszenierung von Mark Foster und Vera Nemirova zeigt. Die Musikgeschichte ist ungerecht: Einige gute Opern sind in Vergessenheit geraten, schlicht weil es eine bessere über den gleichen Stoff gab: Giovanni Paisiellos «Barbiere di Siviglia», Ferdinando Paers «Leonora» (alias «Fidelio») oder Ruggero Leoncavallos «La Bohème» etwa.Der deutsche Komponist Manfred Gurlitt (1890–1972) hat gleich zwei solcher Werke zu beklagen: «Wozzeck» und «Die Soldaten», die durch Alban Bergs und Bernd Alois Zimmermanns Versionen verdrängt wurden.
Royal Opera House, London
"Twitterdammerung: The Twitter Opera"
5. September 2009
Royal Opera's Tweet Success
LONDON, Sept. 6 -- For some seasoned operagoers, it represented the end of all things civilized, a musical Armageddon.
Composed by more than 900 people, the world's first Twitter opera, as organizers are calling it, made its debut over the weekend at the prestigious Royal Opera House in central London
World's first Twitter opera debuts in London
A 20-minute opera written collectively by hundreds of users of social networking site Twitter has premiered at London's Royal Opera House. But critics are clear: the "Twitterdaemmerung" is not the future of opera.
It's very likely the very first opera that's truly a child of the information age - and all that was needed for its inception were a few hundred tweets.
First Twitter opera given premier
The world's first "Twitter opera", Twitterdammerung, has been given its premier at London's Royal Opera House. Opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic gives his verdict.
wasn't holding out much hope for Twitterdammerung: the Twitter Opera. The dubious pun in the title didn't help. And I'd passed my eye over the few extracts that the Royal Opera House had offered up with pride as a preview, and the word 'cod' doesn't really do it justice: "It is a curious story – hear my tale,/Although my name was never Ishmael."
Opernhaus Zürich / Winterthur
Salieri: La grotta di Trofonio
Premiere: 2. September 2009
Gleich und Gleich gesellt sich gern
Opernhaus-Premiere in Winterthur: Antonio Salieris «La grotta di Trofonio
Seit Peter Shaffers Theaterstück «Amadeus» und dessen Verfilmung durch Miloš Forman ist Antonio Salieris Image so schlecht wie falsch. Nicht nur der missgünstige, künstlerisch minderwertige Rivale Mozarts sei er gewesen, sondern auch dessen Mörder. Wie Salieris Musik tatsächlich klingt, ist hingegen wenig bekannt.
Zürcher Opernhaus in Winterthur mit Salieries „La grotta di Trofonio“
Zu hören und zu sehen ist ein Werk, das, gerade in musikalischer Hinsicht, eine sehr gute Figur macht. Trotz gewisser schablonenhafter Züge sorgt Giambattista Castis Libretto der „opera comica“ für viel Situationswitz. Ins (vor)klassische Altertum verlegt, ist der Text gespickt mit Anspielungen auf damals, im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, diskutierte Themen.
Salieris Musik sprüht vor Charme
Das Zürcher Opernhaus eröffnet die Saison mit der Trouvaille «La Grotta di Trofonio» von Antonio Salieri. Der Abend in Winterthur vereint hübsche Musik mit einer etwas statischen Handlung. Die Saisoneröffnung des Zürcher Opernhauses wird traditionell mit dem eigenen Gesangsensemble, aber dem Orchester des Musikkollegiums Winterthur bestritten. Und ebenso traditionell findet dabei eine selten gespielte Oper den Weg auf die Bühne des Winterthurer Stadttheaters.
Theater Winterthur: La Grotta di Trofonio
Das Opernhaus Zürich hat seine Saison 2009/10 traditionsgemäss mit einer Produktion im Theater Winterthur eingeleitet. Mit Antonio Salieris Oper «La Grotta di Trofonio» hat es eine höchst unterhaltsame, echte Trouvaille auf die Bühne gebracht. Zugleich hat Douglas Boyd, der neue musikalische Leiter des Musikkollegiums Winterthur, sich erstmals in der Schweiz als Operndirigent präsentiert.
Salzburg Festival: THEODORA von G.F.Händel
http://theoperacritic.com/reviewsa.php?schedid=szbtheodo0709
Hildegard Behrens, 72, Soprano, Dies
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/18/arts/AP-AS-Japan-Obit-Behrens.html?ref=music
Hildegard Behrens, Soprano Acclaimed for Wagner, Is Dead at 72 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/arts/music/20behrens.html?_r=2&ref=music
Future seasons at the Met
http://balconybox.blogspot.com/2008/06/met-futures-page.html
St. Angela: Angela Gheorghiu Heals The Sick
http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2009/08/st-angela-angela-gheorghiu-heals-the-sick.html
Sante Fe-Opera: Die 1. Dessay Traviata, mit 5 Kritiken (Juli 2009)
http://theoperacritic.com/reviewsa.php?schedid=sfetravia0709
Metropolitan Opera 2009-10 HD season announced
http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2009/02/metropolitan-opera-2009-10-hd-season.html>
Officially, the Metropolitan has announced the 2009-10 HD season:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/news/press/detail.aspx?id=6986>
Tosca, October 10 - Levine; Mattila, M. Álvarez, Uusitalo, Plishka
Aida, October 24 - Gatti; Urmana, Zajick, Botha, Guelfi, Scandiuzzi, Kocán
Turandot, November 7 - Nelsons; Guleghina, Poplavskaya, Giordani, Ramey
Les Contes d'Hoffmann, December 19 - Levine; Kim, Netrebko, Gubanova,
Garanèa, Villazón, Pape
Der Rosenkavalier, January 9 - Levine; Fleming, Graham, Schäfer, Cutler,
Allen, Sigmundsson
Carmen, January 16 - Nézet-Séguin; Frittoli, Gheorghiu, Alagna, Kwiecien
Simon Boccanegra, February 6 - Levine; Pieczonka, Giordani, Domingo, Morris
Hamlet, March 27 - Langrée; Dessay, Larmore, Spence, Keenlyside, Morris
Armida, May 1 - Frizza; Fleming, Brownlee, Ford, Zapata, Banks, van Rensburg
Posted by mostly opera... at 20:50
http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2009/02/metropolitan-opera-2009-10-hd-season.html
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Labels: metropolitan opera
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WASHINGTON: 'SIEGFRIED' /Mai 2009
In This ‘Ring,’ Wagner Gets a Touch of Marx
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
WASHINGTON — Like many companies, the Washington National Opera is presenting its new production
of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in installments over several seasons. But financial setbacks, now everyday news in
the performing arts, have forced the company to stretch out the schedule of its “Ring,” directed by
Francesca Zambello in a co-production with the San Francisco Opera, much further than planned.
The company’s new “Siegfried,” the third opera in the cycle, opened at the Kennedy Center on May 2, three
years after the first, “Das Rheingold.” The “Ring” will not be presented complete until 2013. But this
“Siegfried,” seen here on Thursday night, was worth waiting for.
Ms. Zambello and her creative team, especially the set designer Michael Yeargan, are interpreting Wagner’s
epic through the lens of American mythology and iconography. The “Ring” is presented as a class conflict
between the haves and the have-nots.
In “Siegfried” the struggle has reached “critical mass,” Ms. Zambello writes in a program note, with the
oppressed (the Nibelung dwarfs Mime and Alberich) living in poverty, a once-powerful mogul (the god
Wotan) reduced to scavenging, and the natural world ravaged by greed and rampant development. In the
context of the current economic crisis, this American “Ring” seems eerily resonant.
The real surprise of “Siegfried” was the impressive work of the young German conductor Michael Güttler,
who drew a dynamic, lithe and incisive performance from the orchestra. He had “Siegfried” sounding like
the vibrant scherzo of a four-movement “Ring” symphony. Mr. Güttler had a notable success in 2003 when
he conducted the “Ring” in place of Valery Gergiev at the Kirov Opera in St. Petersburg, Russia. Here he was
substituting for Heinz Fricke, who pulled out of the run because of illness.
As the orchestra begins the quietly ominous and halting music of the introduction, the mood is set through
videos of swirling clouds that slowly morph into smoky pollution from spewing chimneys. Mime, here the
reedy tenor Andreas Conrad in an endearingly snide performance, appears as a ragtag blacksmith working
at a makeshift forge next to a broken-down trailer on the outskirts of a forest where he has raised young
Siegfried. Above the van is a maze of electric power lines. Nearby is a junk pile of scrap metal and trash.
Siegfried, the Swedish tenor Par Lindskog, is a rambunctious bully with long, greasy hair, a sweaty T-shirt
and a tattered leather jacket. Though Mr. Lindskog captured Siegfried as an impulsive adolescent, he
struggled vocally with this punishing role.
He has had a troubled run in the production. He came down with bronchitis, it was announced, just before
the production opened. So for the first two performances he mimed the role onstage while another tenor,
Scott MacAllister, sang it from the side. On Thursday night, his second sung performance, his voice was
often strained, leathery and insecure in pitch, though there were flashes of robust singing.
The potential downside of putting humanizing contemporary spins on Wagner’s mythological characters
comes with the conception of Wotan, who appears in “Siegfried” as The Wanderer. This diminished
Wanderer is an unkempt vagabond lugging a sleeping bag. Before playing his game of wits with the
conniving Mime, Wotan scrounges through Mime’s filthy van, looking for something to eat.
In Act III, during the crucial confrontation scene, Siegfried pushes Wotan around and even kicks him in the
rear. The over-reaching Wotan has fallen low. But Wagner’s music suggests that this god still clings to
shreds of personal dignity. The bass-baritone Alan Held sang the role with intensity and earthy, if
sometimes hard-pressed, sound. But given the conception, he lacked the gravity essential for Wotan.
There are wonderful touches in the production, including a Fafner (Gidon Saks), in his guise as a dragon,
who guards the magic ring in an abandoned factory and operates a monstrous, clanking tank with fearsome
iron claws.
The Woodbird, sung by the chirpy coloratura soprano Micaela Oeste, is metaphorically transformed into a
lanky, enchanting young woman absorbed in a book when she first sees Siegfried.
The mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby was a vocally underpowered Erda. Still, she was touchingly vulnerable
as the earth goddess, who knows all too well the foibles of men, both gods and mortals, who run the world
and mess everything up.
And in the great final love scene, the Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin — yes, the one who helped rescue the
Met’s recent “Ring” when Christine Brewer pulled out of the production — was a radiant, fearless, goldenhaired
Brünnhilde. When Siegfried wakes Brünnhilde from her sleeping spell, Ms. Theorin beautifully
conveyed a shattered woman unable to stand on her limp legs, until Siegfried, overcome with desire, helped
her to her feet. This former goddess, who had never been touched, was at once thrilled and humiliated by
Siegfried’s attention.
Finally, four hours into the evening, with Ms. Theorin there was something this otherwise compelling
“Siegfried” had lacked: vocal charisma.
The final performance of “Siegfried” is on Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center, Washington; (202)
295-2400, dc-opera.org.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
JOSÈ CARRERAS BEENDET OPERN- KARRIERE
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6243600.ece
DER "RING" an der New Yorker Metropolitan Opera
Hoher Blutdruck – Gary Lehmann sang einmal mehr. Das sind die letzten Vorstellungen im Schenk RING an der MEZ Samstag endet diese « Epoche » mit GöDÄ :
http://listserv.bccls.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0905A&L=OPERA-L&T=0&F=&S=&X=32546337CB2823602F&Y=fk298212@hotmail.com&P=199666
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SIEGFRIED in Washington (Mai 2009)
Two-Tenor 'Siegfried' Triumphs
WNO Turns Obstacles To Its Advantage
By Anne Midgette
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 4, 2009
First, the music director canceled: Heinz Fricke's bypass surgery thwarted his plans to lead Wagner's "Siegfried" this
month at the Washington National Opera, and a young German conductor named Michael Güttler was hired instead.
Then, the Brünnhilde was co-opted. Iréne Theorin, scheduled to make her American debut in the same "Siegfried," was called in by the Metropolitan Opera to replace their own Brünnhilde and missed some rehearsals in Washington to sing the role in New York last month -- moving her de facto American debut earlier than anticipated.
And finally, the Siegfried got sick. Pär Lindskog, the Swedish tenor also scheduled to make his WNO debut, came down with bronchitis. There are very few tenors in the world who are able to sing the role. WNO located Scott MacAllister, an American who has had a long career in Germany and sang Siegfried for the first time in Zurich in March. He flew in last week, and sang Saturday night's premiere standing at the side of the stage, while Lindskog pantomimed the role. (This is not an uncommon way to deal with a lead singer's indisposition -- the Virginia Opera resorted to it in its "Tosca" in February when a tenor lost his voice -- but it certainly disturbs the dramatic experience for the audience.)
It all sounds like a recipe for disaster. Instead, it was one of the best "Siegfrieds" I've ever experienced.
Güttler turns out to be wonderful: a real find (as his flourishing career around Europe gives evidence) who got the orchestra to play with focus and verve for most of the evening. The singers were almost uniformly strong. MacAllister, if not the most nuanced or beautiful Siegfried, acquitted himself honorably, pacing himself so he had voice to give all the way through the evening, and deliver, usually, at the climaxes.
And Francesca Zambello's production, the third installment of her "American Ring," incorporated modern elements seamlessly into a sensitive interpretation that, far from imposing an artificial concept on Wagner's work, delivered new
insight into the characters.
The idea of setting "Siegfried" in 20th-century America as the struggle of the have-nots against the system sounds like a rather violent transposition of Wagner's vision. That it wasn't speaks to the thoughtfulness of the production.
Zambello established the mood and space of the piece with video projections of blasted industrial landscapes, desolate yet oddly poetic, before each act.
Mime, in Act 1, was raising Siegfried in a beat-up trailer in the shadow of a power plant, his yard littered with junk (including his forge). The point about the have-nots quickly became clear: Mime, Alberich and even Wotan (known in this opera as the Wanderer) were all hard-luck guys with big dreams, plotting and planning over years. They were the spiritual cousins of conspiracy-theorist militiamen in rural America, or homeless city dwellers buying instant-win lottery tickets.
But the characters' actual behavior was completely in line with Wagner's vision, and Zambello kept the action moving with vivid storytelling. Act 1, often long and discursive, flew by: Mime and the Wanderer's riddle scene, which can seem like a simple rehashing of plot points the audience knows well by this point in the cycle, was dramatically engaging. It helped that Andreas Conrad, as Mime, and Alan Held, as the Wanderer, were both outstanding; Held's powerful voice was at its most mellifluous in this first act. Equally fine was Gordon Hawkins as an angry, powerful Alberich in the industrial bunker-like space that represented the antechamber of the dragon Fafner's cave in Act 2.
And the character of Siegfried, the hostile, bratty kid, emerged with notable depth, even poignancy, as the teenager struggled with his own frustration at not knowing who he is. The dragon Fafner, a forklift-like machine with menacing lights
and metal armor, opened up, after Siegfried's death blow, to reveal the human form of the giant Fafner (Gidon Saks) who had built this contraption (more conspiracy-theorist behavior). And Siegfried, sensing the dying man might know something about his own origins, handled him with a certain crude empathy. At the end of the act, after Siegfried has killed the scheming Mime and is about to be led off by the Forest Bird (Micaëla Oeste, vocally not quite up to the part), he knelt briefly in front of the two bodies whose deaths he had caused: a powerfully humanizing moment. I doubt the character would have come across
the same way if MacAllister, optically less credible than Lindskog as an angry teenager, had tried to act the part without rehearsal.
The third act shows Wotan emancipating himself from a woman (Erda, sung with Post a Comment a wobble by Nancy Maultsby) and Siegfried binding himself to one. "Siegfried" is a long evening (Saturday's show lasted more than 4 1/2 hours), and the final scene is not its strongest part: On paper, the idea of a rapturous duet between Siegfried and Brünnhilde sounds fine, but in practice Wagner didn't quite know what to have them say to each other.
Theorin was fine, a little thick-voiced at the start but capable of some rich sounds as she confronted poor Siegfried with yet more details about his past.
While MacAllister's Siegfried gave it his all, Lindskog's Siegfried, confronted with a whole lot of woman, finally let hormones trump his puzzlement and ended up rolling around with her on the stage so energetically that his body kept the final curtain from coming fully down until Theorin prompted him to roll out of the way.
It could have been another Keystone Kops moment. But because the music and drama had been so strong all night, it emerged instead -- like the awkward two-tenor performance -- as just another human weakness over which the power
of opera ultimately triumphed. What a shame that Washington will have to wait for years to finish the story with "Götterdämmerung."
Siegfried has four more performances through May 17. WNO expects that Lindskog will take over the role, possibly by the next performance.
DIE WALKÜRE in Los Angeles, JENUFA in München, MACBETH in Paris
http://theoperacritic.com/newsletters/2009/04/newsletter.htm
SINGAPORE: Strauss's Clear Success: 'Elektra' in Concert (13.1.2009)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123188733526178871.html
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