Intermezzo

Royal Opera's Flying Dutchman - Bryn fails to save ship from sinking

Der fliegende Holländer - Royal Opera House, 23 February 2009 (opening night)

Oh dearie me. The Royal Opera House don't seem to have much luck with Wagner. And I had such high hopes for this new Der fliegende Holländer production. But I haven't sat through anything quite as tedious at Covent Garden since Iphigénie en Tauride a couple of years back. And a long sit it was too. Two and half hours non-stop is enough to give anyone a barnacled bottom.

It's the director's fault. Isn't it always? 

Tim Albery's focus is Senta's daydreaming.  And what she's escaping from is more important than what she's escaping to. She's not really bothered about the mysterious Dutchman, let alone redemption or any sort of spiritual enlightenment. She just wants to hop on his boat and get outta town. So she symbolically clutches a toy ship in place of the Dutchman's portrait that she sings about, looking predictably deranged.

Her mundane life is displayed in all its drabness. There's only one set, the weathered carcase of a giant ship. The lighting is dim. Welly-clad trawlermen and overalled factory girls stomp around in the gloom. An inch-deep puddle spreads apologetically across the front of the stage like a roof leak. 

There are a couple of arresting visual moments when a bank of sewing machines drop from the sky for the spinning sequence and later when the Dutchman's sailors emerge from the hold tinted ghostly green. But otherwise it's relentlessly grim to watch, and the lack of light rapidly irritates.

A better musical performance might have minimised the damage, but only Anja Kampe's searingly bright and fearless Senta struggled through it with unqualified credit.

Bryn Terfel was not up to his best, uncharacteristically subdued and opaque. To some extent this is demanded in a production which focusses on Senta, but he seemed to have little to offer vocally between a shout and a whisper. I find it hard to believe his voice has declined that much in the year or so since I last heard him, so I hope it's just a short-term health problem. His diction was superb and words immaculately pointed though.

Hans-Peter König's Daland was robustly sung though under-characterised. Torsten Kerl's manic Erik sounded strangulated, and his bleached mullet hurt my eyes nearly as much as the lousy lighting.

But perhaps the best singing came from the well-drilled chorus, who also showed more enthusiasm than anyone else on stage for the dreary production.

Although the Royal Opera House orchestra played very well, Marc Albrecht sanded down and whitewashed every ounce of genuine drama from the music, substituting theatrical mannerism.  Excessively slow passages jarred against sprightly songs in a way which did credit to neither. A neatly-constructed and stirring score became interminably long and unforgiveably tedious. And how could an overture played that fast sound that dull? 

When at the end Senta lay down and expired in the middle of the empty stage (no redemption here), I knew how she felt.

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REVIEWS - a very mixed bag for this one

Rupert Christiansen in the Daily Telegraph - "unmissable"
Edward Seckerson in the Independent - "one of those rare evenings in the opera house that has you sitting so far forward in your seat that every muscle in your body is aching by close of play"
MusicOMH.com - "failed to live up to expectations"
George Hall in The Stage - "some thrilling playing and conductor Marc Albrecht does an impressive job"
Barry Millington in the Evening Standard - "a far cry from the thrilling productions seen in Germany in recent decades"
Musicalcriticism.com - "prevents us from engaging with the characters on a human level"
Richard Fairman in the FT - "The performances of the two central characters .... are so compelling that there is hardly time to focus on anything else"
Neil Fisher in the Times - "the strongest argument in favour of this unsentimental night at the opera comes from the pit"
Andrew Clements in the Guardian - "Tim Albery's staging is built around Bryn Terfel's haunted portrayal of the Dutchman, and the bass-baritone unquestionably delivers"

 

Production photos: Clive Barda
Curtain call photos: intermezzo.typepad.com

a flying Brynterview

 

Last night I went to the Royal Opera House to find out about Tim Albery's new production of Der fliegende Holländer, which opens later this month. The ROH run these 'Insight Evenings' for most productions. There's no fixed format. Live music, talk, background, lectures, recordings - anything or anyone can appear, sometimes even the stars of the show. And that's exactly what we got here. Not just the lovely Anja Kampe (Senta) but the Welsh Dutchman himself, Bryn Terfel. Atoning for past absences maybe? No-one dared to probe that particular issue.

Instead, Bryn answered some more general questions.

He talked about how he prepares for a role, learning by repetition, singing wherever he can, at home or in the car "taking the kids to choir practice". What he sung when he was starting out, like Mozart, was easy to learn. But this is different - once a singer moves on to Wagner, there's no time for a social life. He'll just go straight to the music room when he gets home and open a bottle of red wine.

His first (and to date only) Dutchman was the WNO's 2006 production. But when he looked at the music again three months ago he could remember nothing. It was like looking at a new score. (Too much red wine perhaps?  asked Anja Kampe. We all giggled.)

Studying the discography helps as well. He prefers what he called 'old fashioned' singing, because of the way with words. Diction is very important for Bryn. "The three boys think I'm absolutely crazy" he said (it was so touching how many times he sneaked his kids into the conversation.)

George London's widow gave Bryn some of the great man's marked-up scores, and Bryn was amazed to find he can "cut and paste" London's comments - he had "exactly the same problems" in the same places.

It was clear his feelings about David Pountney's WNO Dutchman were, er, 'mixed'. He prefers traditional productions, so he had to swallow his disappointment when he found out this one was set in outer space. He didn't like the raked stage either. That's partly for health reasons - two of his three back operations followed working on sloping stages.

He's already counted the steps behind the rake in Tim Albery's new set - fifteen, he announced disapprovingly. But he'll get on with it. That's not the only physical trial - he'll also have to tug a rope so heavy it floored a stagehand. (We looked at some design slides later - all wellies and scaffolding - very grim). But he sounded optimistic overall and claimed he's more prepared now than he was first time round. We shall see!

Tristan, Isolde and Vladimir

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Jurowski - Royal Festival Hall, 13 December 2008

As Glyndebourne's house band, the LPO have played a fair few Tristan und Isoldes, no doubt one factor tonight in their polished concert performance of the second act.

The other factor was Vladimir Jurowski, who buffs their sound to a sheen few others can achieve. Not just well-rehearsed, it was well-planned too. The offstage horns at the start were perfectly integrated, and Brangäne's distant warning to the secret lovers, delivered from the choir stalls, sounded truly faraway. But the flipside of forethought is caution. I could admire Jurowski's lucid phrasing and transparent textures. As in the Adagio from Mahler's Tenth which opened the evening, there were moments I heard things that had never struck me before.

But it was too delicately nuanced for any telling dramatic effect, not to mention curiously amorphous overall, the narrative arch sacrificed in favour of the pointed detail. Contrasts were underplayed, and, in the sterile acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall, much left me cold. As an exploration of erotic abandon, it had the nagging undercurrent of a gynecological exam. The foundations are there, but though I always will Jurowski to impress, it's not yet a great interpretation.

The most moving moments of the night came from Laszlo Polgar as King Marke. Despite (or perhaps because of) a bad cold that gave him a few cracking issues, his Tatest Du's wirklich? had real pathos, his bottomless bass hollow with the dignified resignation of a man already dead inside.

Sarah Connolly's Brangäne - her first Wagner role ever, I think - was a great success, too. Concern and worldly wisdom blended in her rich and surprisingly powerful voice. But the Ikea duvet cover dress was not a flattering choice. Stephen Gadd, doubling up as Melot and Kurwenal, also gave a strong if brief performance. 

As for Tristan and Isolde themselves, there are probably no singers around today who can fill the roles entirely satisfactorily.

Robert Dean Smith has on his side a lyrical voice and buckets of stamina. He also knows the role backwards. He never strained or shouted. But there was minimal characterisation -  he sang the part rather than playing it. I'd also prefer to hear a heftier voice in this role.

Anja Kampe has all the makings of a good Isolde. She tends to excessive vibrato, but her voice has strength and warmth and projects well. She also looks the part, and I know from previous exposure what a great actress she is. But at the moment she doesn't seem to know quite who Isolde is. Either that or she was too busy concentrating on getting the basics right (both she and Sarah Connolly used scores) to characterise her interpretation to her fullest ability. She tackles the role in full for the first time at Glyndebourne next summer, so there's plenty of time to work it out.

The Royal Festival Hall certainly knows how to fill a Saturday night; after the concert it was downstairs for more music, this time the London Sinfonietta's 40th birthday celebrations (recorded live for Radio 3 and available for the next few days here). It's a tiring life.

Flying Dutchman - Munich's biggest bang

Der Fliegende Holländer - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 29 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007)

This production ended with a bang loud and misplaced enough to make Wagner spin in his grave. Wagner's Fliegende Hollander ends with Senta sacrificing herself to save the Dutchman's soul, transfiguring both of them in the process by the power of her unconditional love. In Peter Konwitschny's traduction, she blows up the entire cast along with herself using a handy keg of gunpowder in the bierkeller-cum-arsenal of the last act's setting --The End.

Fortunately he didn't take quite as many liberties with the rest of the opera, so it was only the final minute that was ruined. It's a shame though that any of the audience seeing the opera for the first time will have walked away with a complete misconception of the story. Even Lars Von Trier's Breaking The Waves, loosely based though it was, grasped the central idea better. Perhaps it was simply compensation for a lack of novel ideas elsewhere from a director probably hired on the basis of his reputation for innovation.

Konwitschny's other big innovation was rather more successful. He sets the second act girls' spinning scene in a gym spinning class (same pun in German), which fits both text and music perfectly, and provides a colourful visual break from the gloom of the first and last act. The execution of the concept isn't perfect though. The bikes fill the stage, so when Daland and the Dutchman enter the scene later, they're squeezing past them and tripping over. And the surroundings seem incongruous anyway once the spinning girls have exited. The production also made the redeeming angel of the Dutchman's thoughts into a real physical presence, a silent dancer. This worked until it became apparent that Senta could see her too, when I got confused about what she was supposed to represent.

The musical values which redeemed this production would have worked anywhere though. Now that I've seen Juha Uusitalo as the Dutchman, I'm going to find it hard to accept anyone else in the role. His enormous frame was clad as a dusty Van Dyck portrait in cloak and doublet. In voice and presence he was imposing and terrifying, and quite appropriately dominated every scene he was in.

Matti Salminen, who has possibly been playing this role for longer than some of the cast have been alive, was predictably superb, and captured the greed and curious naivete of Daland perfectly. Anja Kampe's powerful soprano retains the girlish edge that Senta needs. It was a touching performance, and if she sounded confused at the very end, I could only sympathise.

I'd been looking forward to seeing Klaus Florian Vogt as Erik, but his replacement, Kurt Streit, did a fine job. With a less idiosyncratic, more mature voice and presence than Vogt, he inevitably brought a different view of Erik, a more traditional interpretation that worked well. Kevin Connors brought some light relief as a fine comic Helmsman, with some neat little visual gags.

The early bars saw a few stumbles from the orchestra and some shabby ensemble from the wind section. It's probable many had also been playing for the morning performance of Il Turco in Italia, which makes it a little more excusable. They sorted themselves out fairly quickly, and Adam Fischer drew out a fine performance, where they actually sounded fresher after two and half hours of constant playing than they had done at the start.

This was a a fabulous production musically - such a shame it had to end in such a ridiculous fashion.