Intermezzo

Berlin orchestras merge - will opera houses follow?

It was announced yesterday that two of Berlin's four orchestras - the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin (DSO) and Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra Berlin (RSB) - are to merge under the leadership of the current RSB head Marek Janowski.

The proposal is still subject to final ratification, but the support of the majority owners, the federal government and German radio, makes this seem inevitable.

The head of German radio orchestras claims the decision has been made on artistic grounds - "Do we want one orchestra in the Champions League or the worry a few years down the line about keeping two orchestras in the Bundesliga?" he told an interviewer.

Perhaps more to the point is that a single orchestra would require a maximum of 125 musicians, whereas the two orchestras together currently employ around 180.

The DSO's chief conductor Ingo Metzmacher has spoken out against the plans, but then he's leaving shortly anyway in protest against earlier funding cuts. "It is a great mistake to think that the merger of two first-class orchestras would create an even better orchestra," said his statement. True, but it would be a cheaper one, and the days of unlimited public funding are long gone.

Meanwhile, Berlin's three opera companies are doing themselves no favours with their half-empty houses and uncoordinated calendars. You can for example catch La bohème at any one of the three this month - a total of 13 performances, or something like 30,000 seats to fill in a city half the size of London.

Of the three houses, only the Komische Oper has a clear identity - new, challenging productions in the German language are its mainstay. The Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper Unter den Linden meanwhile scrabble for funding, stars and audiences with patchy results. One of the few new productions to hit the mark this year was Stefan Herheim's Staatsoper Lohengrin, which incorporated a prescient swipe at Berlin's internecine opera house politicking. Some have speculated that the closure of the Linden opera house for renovations at the end of this season offers an opportunity for reorganisation. Who knows?

Placido Domingo IS Simon Boccanegra - in photos

Most of us won't I guess be lucky enough to be present at Placido Domingo's baritone debut as Simon Boccanegra in Berlin tomorrow. But at least we can look at the pictures.

Here they are, all by Monika Rittershaus for Staastoper unter den Linden:

******   MORE MORE MORE on next page   ******

Domingo and Barenboim team up for Berlin concert

24 October marks a special debut for Plácido Domingo - his first professional performance as a baritone. Daniel Barenboim conducts as Plácido takes the title role in Simon Boccanegra at Berlin's Staatsoper unter den Linden. Crazy ticket prices (up to €220) haven't dented sales - the whole run is sold out.

There are still a few tickets left for an even rarer event though.

On 4 November, Plácido is to give a one-off recital in Berlin's Philharmonie.

Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle will accompany Plácido in works by Handel, Mozart, Wagner, Massenet and Mascagni, together with some zarzuela. All artists involved have waived their fees, and proceeds will go towards the major reconstruction work at the Staatsoper scheduled to start next season.

With ticket prices as high as €260 (a month's rent for many Berliners) for the best seats, that should buy quite a few bricks.

 
 
 

Daniel Barenboim rehearses Onegin with Rolando Villazon

Part of French TV channel ARTE's '24 hours in Berlin' programme broadcast on Saturday.

Daniel Barenboim is chauffeured to the Lindenoper where he smokes a cigar, tells a joke, rehearses Achim Freyer's perplexing Eugene Onegin with Rolando Villazon, speaks four languages fluently, etc, etc.....

smartest bitch in Berlin

 

The adorable fluffy doggie pictured above is a canine beauty queen, or Cruft's Champion as it's more correctly known. And, if her website's About page can be believed, she's also the talented snapper behind some stunning photos taken at Berlin's opera houses.

Stefan Herheim's recent Lohengrin, the inimitable Placifal, Rene Pape in Faust - they're all there.

Photo gallery here .

What the Gluck - Calixto Bieito's Armida

Armida - Komische Oper Berlin, 5 April 2009

Gluck said that an opera's overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are to see.

Advice that Calixto Bieito must have taken to heart for his Armida. There were more bare botties on stage in the first five minutes than you'd see in a whole season at the Royal Opera House, a trusty indication of the oddly unsecksy flesh-fest which was to follow. All male, apart from one bewildered-looking granny, their function was to service the desires of Armida and her lady friends, a bunch of corporate dragonesses in ohso-passé Ally McBeal suits.

Welcome to the Komische Oper, Berlin's racier version of the ENO, where seats are cheap, audiences are young and open-minded, operas are sung in the local language, and producers are given free rein.

Bieito's Armida has no interest in the joyless parade of flesh, and I do see her point. Was it even intended to shock? However outrageous the photos may look (scroll down for more), a sort of Benny Hill daftness soon sets in.

So Armida's target is the fully-clothed Rinaldo. But he's not that interested. Torn between fascination and rage she swears to kill him, but she can't make herself follow through, even with the help of the Marlene Dietrich-like figure of 'Hate'.  So they fall in love, but then his mates burst through the walls of the stalls like G20 rioters (an amazing bit of theatre) to try and winkle him out of her clutches. They don't succeed, and the whole thing ends with a triumphant murder-suicide. Along the way there's a bit of lipstick lesbianism, a raped nun, a guy dancing with a ten foot python and the granny gets it on with a hunk while swinging in a chair ten foot above the stage. Classic Bieito.

This deconstructionist approach can be revelatory in more familiar works. I loved his Don Giovanni for example. Here I wasn't so sure. Though the snatched moments between the lovers were rendered truly tenderly (if only by contrast), a lot of the action seemed superfluous and merely decorative. 

On a more technical level, I was impressed all round - by the blocking, the personenregie, the clarity of expression, and particularly the seamlessness of the production. Even though this is a 'number' opera, the action continued intelligently in a single narrative flow through the often lengthy ballets and interludes. Bieito truly is one of the great craftsmen of the operatic stage, and the massive applause he received at the end (very few boos) recognised his achievement.

Maria Bengtsson doesn't have the largest of voices, but it's the right sort of silvery soprano for the demanding central role and she was convincing throughout. The lush mezzo of Maria Gortsevskaya as Hate was even more impressive, her malevolent presence never slipping into caricature. Some of the other voices weren't quite 'baroque' enough and some simply weren't loud enough. But it was generally sung well, though the clunky German translation (from the original French) did it no favours, and some sloppy diction (no surtitles here) often rendered the action mystifying.

The baroque specialist Konrad Junghänel conducted the Komische Oper orchestra and their modern instruments sensitively if rather conservatively. Textures were light and the pace snappy, and if some of the detail remained obscured, thankfully there was no more than a gentle nod towards 'authentic' period practice. Last month I heard these same musicians perform Weill's Mahagonny - the polar opposite of Armida - no less convincingly. A truly versatile ensemble.

Below is a pre-production video with interviews and some explicit content:

Go here for some (warning!) explicit production photos, and find more photos over the page........

Barenboim f's up

Staatskapelle Berlin / Daniel Barenboim / Yefim Bronfman - Philharmonie Berlin, 5 April 2009

Daniel Barenboim's perennially packed schedule gets an extra helping of stuffing each Easter. This is the time of the Berlin Festtage, a week of concerts and operas instituted by Barenboim, where everything is conducted or performed by him.

The performances alone would be enough to floor most musicians, but remember, they all have to be rehearsed as well. How does he find the time? Or rather, does he find the time? Lohengrin's director Stefan Herheim complained of Barenboim's apparent lack of interest in the staging - well, something's got to give. Though on the the evidence of Lohengrin's slipshod first night, perhaps not quite enough.

This concert, which kicked off just twenty hours after the Lohengrin marathon ended, provided yet another display of Barenboim and the Staatskapelle at less than their best.

I've sometimes pondered, sitting in the Philharmonie, whether it's the hall itself and its marvellous acoustic which gives the Berlin Philharmonic their special luxuriously polished sound. The answer? - the Staatskapelle conclusively proved that the Philharmonie magic doesn't work for every orchestra in Berlin.

Just as the previous night, the brass section were the worst offenders - too many mistakes to count. But the strings sounded rough too - all playing the right notes at the same time, but with little unanimity of purpose. They're a great orchestra, but this performance was raw and unfocused.  However many rehearsals they had, they needed more.

Of the two works on show, Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 came off slightly better than Mahler's Ninth. Yefim Bronfman had to pummel away to be heard  - this was no occasion for refinement - but at least Barenboim captured something of the rhapsodic sweep and swell. 

The Mahler though was grotesque. Fast, loud, randomly accented, audience-grabbing perversity. Barenboim conducted like a man with a train to catch. OK, so the Ländler movement had an unforced rustic charm. But I assume it was merely coincidental, because so did the Adagio. Just awful. I'm a huge Barenboim fan, as regular readers will know, but when he stinks, he stinks real bad.

The whole thing was recorded, but I suspect if it's played back with a cool head, it may never see the light of day.

 ************************************

The Philharmonie stage is in the round, with about 2/3 of the seats to the side or rear of the orchestra. I sat directly behind them - hence the odd angle:

 

Filming away:

 

Herheim's Berlin Lohengrin - more photos, more thoughts

Here are a few photos from Die Welt's review of Saturday night's Lohengrin premiere in Berlin (summary - Manuel Brug found the production confused and generally disappointing) and some more Staatsoper rehearsal shots. (Some earlier ones here).

Below those are a whole load more that I took at the curtain call.

The end of the Vorspiel - a silent Elsa (Dorothea Roschmann) appears with a dove projected behind. It flies up and away - a Parsifal reference:

Act I - the workers of the three Berlin opera companies unite:

Lohengrin (Klaus Florian Vogt) appears. Elsa whips off her clothes to reveal, like the rest of the cast, she's wearing a wood-grained body stocking. "I love you" sings Lohengrin before swiftly covering her with his cloak. The chorus shiver jealously: 

Ortrud and Telramund (Michaela Schuster and Gerd Grochowski):

I yam the White Goddess!  Ortrud (MIchaela Schuster) plots her revenge in Act II. A shadowy tree grows behind her:

 

Act II - Richard Wagner lookalikes control human marionettes:

The puppets turn the tables and the sticks become weapons of jeebus. A bit of a Ken Russell moment:

 

The second act sees the chorus all dressed as Richard Wagner. But without pants:

The bridal bed. Elsa is clearly up for it, but Lohengrin keeps going on about the perfumed night, etc. The conflict is subtly drawn:

Elsa regrets her impertinent question but it's too late:

The final curtain - Klaus Florian Vogt and Daniel Barenboim:

 

MORE MORE MORE over the page..................

Lohengrin in Berlin - first night - first report

Lohengrin - Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 4 April 2009

Well, it turns out the uber-traditional rehearsal photos were a decoy. Or to be more accurate, they only tell part of the story. Stefan Herheim's new production is as subtly allusive and ultimately impenetrable as the music itself. There are so many ideas there - I'm not sure I even noticed, let alone understood everything - but then I don't know whether I really needed to.

Daniel Barenboim didn't carry out his threat to play the overture twice, though it sounded as if the extra rehearsal might have been useful - the overture was just the first instance of recurrently scrappy playing.

With the first notes, on came the first of the promised string puppets, a near-lifesize Richard Wagner, standing on a tree-stump 'conducting' the orchestra with a giant feather. Was that what really riled Barenboim?

The puppet disappeared, hauled slowly upwards through a giant shower curtain, lit blood-red. I mention all these details because just like the Wagner's musical themes, they reappeared later - the puppets throughout, the feather as Lohengrin's swan, the red curtain as the grail. Even puppet-Wagner's skyward exit was mirrored by Lohengrin's at the very end. The light changed to white, and a flying dove was projected. Parsifal ends, Lohengrin begins.

I'm generally with Barenboim on staged preludes. Usually they're dramatically redundant - servants scrubbing the steps and so on. Distracting and irrelevant. But this one was perfect and vital. Barenboim's complaint on principle alone seems to confirm Herheim's claim about his lack of interest in the staging and his reluctance to change any customary viewpoint. It would be impossible to make the parallel criticism of Herheim, who seemed to have absorbed, digested and reflected the musical themes and underlying structure to an extent I've never seen before in any opera production.

The spat at least underlined the foresight of Herheim's main setting - the Berlin Opera Wars circa 2009. The Saxons and Brabantines are replaced by opera workers, each wielding an alter-ego string puppet. Elsa is one of them, and she literally creates Lohengrin, who appears amongst the modern masses as a medieval knight - or at least a traditional opera producer's idea of one, in swan helmet and silver tights.

The modern characters turn into their traditionally-costumed puppet counterparts - all the chorus are Richard Wagners, Being John Malkovich style. They drop their trousers and everything else to reveal wood-grained body stockings, figleaf critically placed, like Cranach's Adam and Eve, and oddly asexual. There's even a Garden of Eden in the second act, where Elsa offers Ortrud one of the handily-fallen apples.

The marionettes pop up again and again, their cross-stick controls raised here and there like swords, or more often like vampire-repelling crosses. As a shadowy projection of a tree grows behind the scheming Ortrud, we are reminded even more forcibly that Lohengrin is a parable for the victory of Christianity over nature-worshipping heathens.

But the finale, where the new king Gottfried is presented as a puppet Lohengrin shows us that in Brabant, as in the paralysed, self-destructive world of Berlin opera, that nothing ever really changes.

The only part that didn't really work was the first scene of the second act, where Ortrud and Telramund quarrel. Herheim seemed to have run out of ideas here, so we got an interminable argument punctuated by - o noes not again - a chair flung across the stage. Then a drag queen appeared with a live spaniel and water rained down from the flies. No it didn't, but you know what I mean.

The chorus, like the orchestra, seemed under-rehearsed. Too many lapses of ensemble and simple errors. Barenboim clearly managed to communicate what he wanted, though, and tempo and dynamics were superbly judged throughout.

And the individual performances could hardly be bettered.

Klaus Florian Vogt's bearded Viking Lohengrin was a perfect blend of spirituality and belligerence. What always amazes about his voice live - it's something recordings just don't pick up - is its sheer size, almost alarmingly beautiful in so delicate an instrument.

This was Dorothea Roschmann's first Elsa, and in the first act at least, it showed. But she improved, losing vibrato and gaining confidence. Although she never asserted herself quite as strongly as the production concept seemed to demand, at least she sang beautifully, never screeching or grabbing for notes at the top.

Michaela Schuster's panto Ortrud was a little over-the-top for my tastes, but again, it was hard to fault the sound she made. Late sub Kwangchul Youn flagged a little towards the end, but his Heinrich was powerful and authoritative, and I really didn't miss Rene Pape. Gerd Grochowski and Arttu Kataja as Telramund and Herald made less of an impact, but were fine too.

There was not much of the usual Berlin booing. Each act was greeted with massive applause, and at the end there was a standing ovation for Daniel Barenboim and the orchestra. Stefan Herheim was less warmly greeted, but the cheers far outweighed the negatives.

The crowned heads of opera were out in force, and not just the Royal Opera House representatives. Sitting next to Stefan Herheim in the centre of the stalls was the best-dressed man in the house, Rufus Wainwright, wearing black pants with mariachi-style sequinned musical symbols down each leg and (in the 70' heat) sweater and scarf beneath his jacket. I felt positively dowdy in comparison. He bravely stood to applaud Stefan Herheim at the end, the only one who did.

More and hopefully better photos in a few days, but here are a few to be going on with (the one at the top btw is a statue behind the LIndenoper - the bear being the symbol of Berlin. Are the teddies shagging or scrapping? Or is it all - just play?): 

 

New best mates:

Herheim vs Barenboim - the battle continues

Daniel Barenboim may have struck first.  His poke at Stefan Herheim's disregard for the sanctity of Wagner's overtures - mere days before their Lohengrin premiere - was boldly timed. But then the whole run's sold out and Berlin Staatsoper operates a no-returns policy, so who cares?

But now the Norwegian bruiser hits back, and hard, in two German newspaper interviews.

He tells Der Tagesspiel that the Staatsoper is all about the big names on the bill, and artists are stifled because too much effort is wasted in day-to-day damage control. And yes he does mention names - just one in fact - Barenboim's.

Going even further in Die Welt,  he complains of Barenboim's lack of interest in the production - despite the fact that it was Barenboim who personally begged him to take it on, and even shifted the dates around to accommodate him. He alleges a lack of discipline which begins at the top. Again he talks about management by damage control. Decisions are governed by the fear that it doesn't continue at all [the Staatsoper is due to shut in 2013 for extensive renovations], not by the hope that something new might develop. In this respect, he claims Berlin Staatsoper resembles Brabant - discord prevails.

Despite the strife, he's been working round the clock - sometimes until 7am - to perfect the production. "Lots of people think I'm on coke" he says, "but music is my drug".

Lohengrin in Berlin in photos

Berlin Staatsoper have released a few Lohengrin rehearsal pics. They show a (surprisingly?) traditional-looking production, though of course costumes are only a small part of the story.

( ***UPDATE*** go here for first night report )

Klaus Florian Vogt as hairy-biker Lohengrin. Is that what they call 'swan-upping'?: 

 

Dorothea Roschmann as Elsa:

Michaela Schuster as Ortrud:

 

Never upset a nun:

 

Vikings invade Richard Wagner lookalike contest:

    

And here is director Stefan Herheim with one of the puppets that may or may not appear at some point in the evening. I was going to lower myself to a small Dick joke but thought better of it: 

   

Heads down, gloves off, it's Barenboim vs Herheim

Shirley Apthorp reveals that a spat is brewing between Daniel Barenboim and Stefan Herheim, the director of Berlin Staatsoper's new Lohengrin, which opens on Saturday.

“We have a disagreement about the overture.”

Herheim plans to stage a silent play to the music of the overture. Barenboim believes that the overture should be heard without distraction.

“In Rossini, even in Mozart, overtures are often interchangeable,” Barenboim says. “But with Wagner the whole world of the opera to come is expressed in the prelude. If the curtain is down, you create your own associations, and I think the experience is richer.”

So what does he think should be done?

“It’s too late to change Herheim’s staging, so I’m toying with the idea of playing through the overture twice.”

Yay !!! two for the price of one!!! The civilised solution.

Stefan Herheim pulls the strings

Director Stefan Herheim talks briefly to BZ (in German) about his new production of Lohengrin for Berlin's Staatsoper. With René Pape and Burkhard Fritz dropping out at the last minute, Herheim says he had to work 90 hours last week. And he recalls his first opera house - a puppet theatre he had at the age of six.

Did this inspire his production? As reported in Der Tagesspiel (German again), it's positively puppet-packed - and they all look like Richard Wagner. Some are in horned helmets, others sport Wagner's favoured velvet toque and sideburns. Herheim's coy about how he's going to use them. But he says he sees Lohengrin as a puppet, a symbol of an empty promise. If this means we get some silly toy on stage instead of Klaus Florian Vogt, I'll come round and snip Mr Herheim's strings. Personally.

Rehearsal photos by Karl Forster from BZ

 

Rumblings in Brabant - Klaus Florian Vogt is Berlin's new Lohengrin

From Per-Erik at WagnerOpera.net comes the fabulous almost too-good-to-be-true news that Klaus Florian Vogt will replace Burkhard Fritz as Lohengrin in Stefan Herheim's new production at Berlin's Staatsoper. And I has ticket!

Despite Rene Pape's recent pull-out, this is shaping up to be some production - the world's greatest Wagner conductor , one of the most fascinating, provocative (in a good way) directors around - and now every sane music-lover's favourite Lohengrin. Can't wait!

Rene Pape - noch erkrankt

 

It appears the 'circulatory problems' which first derailed Rene Pape's Berlin Faust last month, then caused him to cancel his Parsifal in Berlin and London, have mutated into 'a very bad cold'.

So bad in fact that it's expected to last for at least the next two weeks. As Per Erik at Wagner Opera reports in more detail, he's now cancelled April's eagerly-anticipated new Lohengrin in Berlin.

His replacement is Kwangchul Youn - capable, experienced, respected - but would he do a gig in a gay disco? Or own up to smoking like a chimney? With Pape, it's not just about the voice, glorious though it is, it's the edge that his life brings to his art.

Whatever the truth behind the tangle of stories, we can only hope he'll be back on stage as soon as his health allows.

Arcadi Volodos in Berlin

Arcadi Volodos - Philharmonie Berlin, 8 March 2009

Scriabin Etude in F sharp major Op.42 No. 3, Prelude in B flat minor Op.37 No. 1, Prelude in B flat minor Op.11 No. 16, Dance languide Op.51 No. 4, Two Dances: Flammes sombres, Guirlandes Op.73, Sonata No. 7 "White Mass"    Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales    Schumann Waldszenen    Liszt Après une lecture de Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata

Arcadi Volodos hasn't visited London for a while, but he can sell a thousand seats in Berlin, no problem. There was plenty of enthusiastic ovating all round, though for me this concert didn't really take off until some way through the second half.

His opening Scriabin selection were cleverly juxtaposed so that he was able to run them together without any breaks. Unfortunately, this served mainly to expose the limitations in his expressive range, bathing everything in the same rhapsodic impressionistic gloss. His posture - head flung back, costive grimace - seemed more a substitute for real engagement than an expression of it.  Then he managed to make Ravel sound like Scriabin (or was it vice-versa?) - technically an achievement I suppose. It was so frustrating to listen to that phenomenal technique, all the strength, control, and accuracy any pianist would kill for, employed in such a banal fashion.

And I thought the Schumann Waldszenen would be more of the same, but with the seventh of the ninth little pieces, the curious, elliptical Vogel als Prophet, Volodos finally blossomed. He stopped performing and started just playing.  Liszt's Dante Sonata showed him at his very best, its fire and brimstone tamed by his velvet touch. And his extraordinary technical facility meant he was never simply struggling to grab the right notes. It gave an inkling of what differentiated Liszt himself from his contemporaries as a pianist - the fluidity and ease, the disappearance of technical barriers to pure expression. This wasn't hard work for Volodos - in fact it barely sounded like work at all. Just a guy and a piano.

 

Daniel Barenboim gets up and gets down

Daniel Barenboim / Laura Volkwein / Claudius Popp / Hanno Müller-Brachmann  - Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, 8 March 2009

Mendelssohn Sonate für Violoncello und Klavier B-Dur op. 45
Frühlingslied op. 47/3
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges op. 34/2
Wanderlied op. 57/6
Sonate für Violoncello und Klavier D-Dur op. 58
Neue Liebe op. 19a/4
Der Mond op. 86/5
Reiselied op. 34/6
Andres Maienlied op. 8/8
Trio für Violine, Violoncello und Klavier d-Moll op. 49

How does Daniel Barenboim do it? Get up in time for an 11am concert on a Sunday, that is. I could barely wrench myself out of bed. Staatsoper colleagues Claudius Popp (cello), Laura Volkwein (violin) and Hanno Müller-Brachmann joined him to celebrate Mendelssohn's 200th birthday in front of a packed-out Staatsoper.

Popp's aggressive, muscular playing fitted the Barenboim mould perfectly. Anyone who'd expected a genteel Sunday morning's music-making would have been severely disappointed. This was not chocolate-box Mendelssohn, but something far more raw and meaty.

Evidently recovered from Friday's Parsifalthon, Barenboim matched every ounce of his much younger partner's energy. Here was a glint of how he manages to maintain his punishing performance schedule. There's nothing forced about it - he simply loves what he does and summons up a kind of natural caffeine to fuel it.

Hanno Müller-Brachmann too gave it everything he'd got. The Staatsoper is not a venue that invites subtlety, and it suited Müller-Brachmann's full-on approach better than the Wigmore in January. Here he can let go. His attention to colouring of the text is remarkable; his only chink an inability to sustain a note cleanly. What's more, even in lieder he's a compelling stage presence and a natural actor, able to extract every nuance of a song and play it all the way to the back row.

The remarkable empathy of this little team was underlined in the closing trio - so powerfully and joyfully delivered it generated spontaneous applause after the second movement.

Gustavo Dudamel drives Berlin Philharmonic to the edge

Berliner Philharmoniker / Dudamel / Viktoria Mullova - Philharmonie Berlin, 7 March 2009

Arnold Böcklin - Die Toteninsel

Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead; Stravinsky Violin Concerto; Prokofiev Symphony No. 5

Gustavo Dudamel has moved way, way beyond playing samba with kids, even if British press reviews don't always reflect this. Even if his abilities didn't always match his ambitions, this all-Russian programme proved that he deserved to be handed the keys to the Aston Martin of orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic.

Relentlessly rolling rhythm and the growling basses of the Berlin Phil married in a dark and brooding reading of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead (inspired by the painting above). The moments of repose were too few and too restless to provide the necessary structural contrast, but this journey can rarely  have been made with such propulsive urgency.

Dudamel remained at sea in a different sense with Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. It was the only time he used a score all night - a misbehaving mini-version that wouldn't lie flat. There was little to suggest he'd seen the work before ever in his life (despite having played it here the two previous nights). He seemed reluctant to impose anything beyond a tempo on its spare classical lines.

And there was no sense of collaboration or interplay with the soloist, Viktoria Mullova. She seemed even more buried in the score than he did, and it was hard to escape the impression she was sight-reading. Like many in the audience, not to mention several members of the orchestra, I diverted my attention to the fascinating flexion of the impressive Madonna-muscled arms and back revealed by her airy origami-parachute frock.

But Dudamel redeemed himself and then some with his storming Prokofiev. And this time, no score. Pinpoint-precise playing anchored the outrageous exuberance. He may have sidelined some of the work's inherent complexity and contradictions, but you couldn't wish for a more confident and vibrant reading. The orchestra played out of their skins for him and rose as one the second it was over. Those who complain that Dudamel doesn't shape work as a whole have a point of sorts, but they're missing another one. Dudamel at his best lives and plays absolutely in the moment - and it's an intense and exhilirating ride, if you're open to it.

Dudamel is called back for about his 10th bow (no kidding) - orchestra have already gone home:

***********************************

flip over for more photos............

Parsifal in Berlin - Domingo flubs it

Parsifal - Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 6 March 2009

This Parsifal has the distinction of being the worst production ever mounted at the Berlin Staatsoper, according to my local source. At its 2005 premiere, normal etiquette was inverted - there were apparently so many boos that the handful of applauders were shamed into silence.

On this showing, I didn't think it was that bad. Incompetent, yes, idiotic (a la Barrie Kosky), no. It was movie producer Bernd 'Resident Evil' Eichinger's first (and so far only) venture into the world of opera - and who knows how the Beverly Hills-based millionaire got the gig? Predictably, his Wagnervision incorporates extensive use of video back projections - technically beautifully executed (by Möller and Hinrichs aka fettFilm). The stage is uncluttered, there's no extraneous detail. So far so good.

It's the content that's the problem. A spinning Earth is projected over the first scene, where the squires are hydrocephalic aliens, the main characters your regular medieval types. Then the grail knights appear as ancient Egyptians (possibly - my history's not that good) in a shattered temple. Klingsor's garden is a bare stage, but a window later reveals a sub-aquatic vista - have we dropped beneath the sea?

The last act opens in a 1940's New York park (hyper-realistic, mums with prams, etc) - but then the knights reappear as a Mad Max biker gang on a climbing frame. Evidently time travel is indicated - but why? And why stop at those specific points?

Eichinger goes some way to redeeming himself by getting a few things absolutely right. 

When the bleeding corpse of the very realistic swan he has just shot is presented to Parsifal, he understands the consequences of his actions, that he has taken a life, in a way that no limp hanky or ceramic bird (just a couple of the other productions I've seen) could ever achieve.

And the image of the swan's death-wound is echoed in the posture and flowing white robes of Amfortas. The grail ceremony begins with his heart - rendered in gruesomely accurate form - which he tugs out for communion-style distribution amongst the knights. The connection with Christian ritual is made explicit. Kundry's transformations are simply but effectively indicated with costume changes. It's just the bits in between that are the problem......

It was certainly baffling, but rarely irritating (though the delicious and deceptively alcoholic himbeer bowle I enjoyed at each interval may have affected my twerp-tolerance), and if there were any boos for the production this time round, I didn't hear them.

The only boos (and there weren't many) were directed at Plácido Domingo, possibly here to compensate for pulling out of a couple of earlier stagings. He looked totally unrehearsed, needed a prompter throughout the second act, and missed, cracked or whispered every highish note. And, even with bad light and squinting, there's no way he could pass for a day under 60. But - but - close your eyes - and the voice (or most of it) is still there, burnished and ardent. And the presence is undeniable. The third act, where in this production Parsifal is older as well as wiser, showed him at close to his best though. Despite all his faults, it was an impressive showing.

Waltraud Meier's Kundry, horridly curdled top aside, was unassailable. Her face, strangely inexpressive in recent months, seems to have relaxed and regained its life along with its wrinkles. An all round lack of direction/rehearsal enabled her to craft the part around her own skills. This incoherent production became Kundry's opera by default.

With Rene Pape suffering from some unspecified long-term ailment, Matti Salminen was drafted in at short notice to play Gurnemanz. Wearing his years even better than Domingo, he provided an authoritative anchor, sage and stately. Even if his singing is not the smoothest or loveliest, that's hardly a big drawback in this part.

The standout performance came from an unexpected source. Hanno Müller-Brachmann has an unusually light and lyrical voice for Amfortas, but the flexibility and the range of colour made his physical and spiritual torment devastatingly real and his vulnerability desperately touching.

And of course Daniel Barenboim was reliably unreliable, his graveyard-pace Vorspiel no clue to the abrupt and idiosyncratic tempo shifts he was to apply later on. But somehow it flexed and breathed organically, even if the gear changes were a little too obvious in places. The Berlin Staatskapelle played marvellously for him, and the translucency of sound, the sheer detail, were just astonishing. I look forward to their joint visit to the Royal Festival Hall at the end of the year.

 

**********************************************

more curtain call photos over teh page..................

Daniel Barenboim sticks it to the States

In between rehearsals for tomorrow's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra concerts at Berlin Staatsoper, Daniel Barenboim found time earlier today for a press conference, where he described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as 'local' and criticised the US and Iran for sticking their noses in.

On a musical note, some rehearsal photos below.