Die Frau ohne Schatten - Grosses Festspielhaus Salzburg, 29 July 2011 (first night)
It now seems incredible that Strauss's musically richest and most colourful opera was dismissed as 'boring' by its first critics. Christian Thielemann coaxed the Vienna Philharmonic into a display of such aural opulence on its Friday premiere that it was easy to overlook the deficiencies of Christof Loy's meagre production.
Continue reading "Die Frau ohne Schatten opens in Salzburg " »
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Die Frau ohne Schatten opens at the Salzburg Festival tomorrow night in a new production by Christof Loy (photos below). It will be conducted - without any cuts - by Christian Thielemann, who says it is his favourite Strauss opera.
Loy's staging was inspired by the circumstances of the opera's first recording in 1955. Its conductor, Karl Böhm, was so driven to set the work down that he persuaded his ill-assorted ensemble to work without fees, in the midst of winter, in unheated rooms. And so Loy's production begins with a young singer hired to record the part of the Empress. According to Maestro Thielemann, not even the cast are quite sure what it all means.
A local Salzburg boutique meanwhile has out-regied the Regisseur with a puzzling complementary display of Trachtenmode and hand-painted wellies.
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Lucrezia Borgia - Nationaltheater Munich, 25 July 2011
Created two years ago as a star vehicle for the eternal Edita Gruberova, Christof Loy's production is well-known to those interested in such things via the DVD which appeared soon afterwards. Loy's latterday predilection for monochrome, minimalist sets is manifested in a stage that remains resolutely bare except for the occasional chair. But then who goes to the opera to admire the furniture (apart from Amazon reviewers)?
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A quick first glimpse of Christof Loy's new Tristan und Isolde for the Royal Opera House shows that anyone expecting billowing sails and crumbling towers is going to be disappointed.
His design inspiration like his leading lady Nina Stemme appears to hail from Sweden. The Baltic greys of the monochrome sets, the COSy costumes, the painted-on panelling suggest not just a man who can work to a budget but the cool nordic austerity of early Bergman.
And not a ship in sight.
********** many more photos over the page *********
Continue reading "pure theatrical IKEA - Christof Loy's flatpack Tristan in photos" »
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Lulu - Royal Opera House, 8 June 2009
This was a lot better second time round. With the pressure of opening night behind her, Agneta Eichenholz sang cleanly and securely throughout, Klaus Florian Vogt was more focussed, and the action progressed more confidently. I didn't even notice any amplification on the speaking voices, which I guess means it was done more adeptly this time.
And was it my imagination, or was did the singers move downstage to sing more often? Evidently some changes had been made, because Alwa was murdered (as per Berg's stage directions) this time, instead of committing suicide as Loy had rewritten for the opening night.
There were certainly fewer inaudible episodes. That was partly down to Pappano, who sat on the orchestra every time a singer opened their mouth. Lulu is hardly a classic 'singers' opera' in the bel canto sense, but that's how Pappano treated it, with the orchestra alternately blooming forth gloriously and shrinking into a backing band. Most strange, and often at odds with the drama.
There were, unusually, cameras at the front of the stalls as well as the back to capture this performance, presumably for future DVD release.The clarity of this simply-set production remains its strength, something I suspect will be even more obvious when it's seen on screen.
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Lulu - Royal Opera House, 4 June 2009 (first night)
What is it with opera directors and their fascination with film? Are they all frustrated Steven Spielbergs? Christof Loy isn't quite as nakedly entranced as the likes of Robert Lepage. His new Covent Garden Lulu foregoes the silent film traditionally played over the central interlude (per composer instructions). But the minimalist production embodies the dark tone and moral ambivalence of classic film noir in its laconic, stylised gestures and anonymous visuals. The set, nothing but a long sectioned wall that stretches across the stage like a length of film, underlines the point.
It's a workable concept, but it was a little lost in the vast expanse of the Covent Garden stage (fully visible from wings to flies thanks to unwaveringly stark lighting). With the cast clad in nineties office-wear and nothing but a chair on stage, it looked like a recently-burgled boardroom. Without scene changes or major lighting variations, it was hard to tell when time and location had changed. Some actions became downright incomprehensible - would anyone who didn't know the opera realise that when Alwa picked up an axe after the Painter's suicide he was breaking open an entirely non-existent door to reach the body?
And the shortage of reverberant surfaces meant that even the most powerful voices disappeared as their owners moved upstage. Miking them for the spoken sections solved half the problem, but it created a grating disjunct with the singing. If only the budget had stretched to walls.
Clearly some of the audience were less than thrilled - unusually lukewarm applause for the production team even included a few boos, a real rarity here.
It left the cast an uphill task to create something more than a concert performance, but they largely succeeded. Clearly well-rehearsed and choreographed to the inch, movement and gesture were as spare as the set, but every one was telling. Apart from the shoes. Nobody wants to wear stilettos for three hours non stop, but what was with all the taking off and putting back on again?
At the centre, Agneta Eichenholz as Lulu was superb in her Covent Garden and role debut. This Lulu is no coquette. She's a beautiful enigma, objectified in the eyes of those who desire her, but incapable of reciprocating. Agneta Eichenholz may look like Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn but her Lulu was lethally iced. She started so tentatively I seriously worried she might rush off in tears. But she pulled herself together and nailed the impossible, stratospheric coloratura with ever-increasing confidence. At the end, far from spent, she sounded ready to do it all over again.
Michael Volle's robust Dr Schön was the other big hit. An adventurous director's dream, he has a big, heroic sound, he can act, and he's happy to look a bit of a t1t in the service of Art. Quite handy when you're daubed with lipstick and greasepaint in emulation of the lady wife's stage make-up (another touch that eluded my comprehension).
The blindingly-toothed Jennifer Larmore gave a touching and intelligently-nuanced performance as Gräfin Geschwitz, the reverse-image of the iron-clad Lulu in her femininity and vulnerabilty.
Philip Langridge's sleazy, seedy final act Marquis was his third and finest creation of the evening, following an equally-detailed Prince and Manservant.
Some of the other character doublings weren't so clearly differentiated, particularly Will Hartmann's attractively-sung Painter/Negro and Michael Volle's Jack the Ripper. Perhaps this was intentional - they reappeared for the final act wearing the same bloodstained clothes they'd died in way back in Act I. But this would ignore one of the points Berg's doubling makes - not that these characters are reincarnated but that the same kind of people exist in respectable bourgeois society as the shadowy world of pimps and prostitutes. And instead of being murdered by these 'dead' clients, Loy has Alwa slit his own throat, and Geschwitz is allowed to live - more neatly symmetrical perhaps, but again missing the point that those who truly care for Lulu are in the end destroyed.
Peter Rose's bravely-exposed jelly-belly Athlete raised most of the scant laughs of the evening - for his appearance rather than his commanding singing I should add. Klaus Florian Vogt's Alwa swam disappointingly in and out of focus, though the climactic second act encounter with Lulu 'on the sofa where your father bled to death' was done to devastating effect.
The orchestra were clearly well prepared for their trials and played cleanly throughout. Thanks to a kindly benefactor I was sitting much closer to the stage than I usually do - close enough in fact to observe Pappano in action. I didn't realise quite how much noise he makes or how much energy he expends, huffing and grunting and scrabbling his paws like a Jack Russell dreaming of rabbits. Whether it's for the orchestra's benefit or his own is not clear. Balance was exemplary and there was some beautiful detailing here and there. But in making the singers' difficult job easier by holding back when he could have been powering forward, an efficient accompaniment too often substituted for real dramatic tension.
My close quarters also permitted me to note that a couple of times a singer who shall remain nameless unselfconsciously sent great volleys of saliva arcing into the pit as he blasted forth. My advice to the horn section - if you think the roof's leaking, don't stick your tongue out to check...
************** curtain call photos on next page **************
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Christof Loy's new production of Berg's Lulu opens at the Royal Opera House today with Agneta Eichenholz (above) in the title role.
Here are a few resources for the curious. Impressions of the show to follow tomorrow.
musicalcriticism.com: Antonio Pappano on the Royal Opera's new Lulu
operatoday.com: Michael Volle’s intriguing Dr Schön
Daily Telegraph: Agneta Eichenholz: new Lulu taps into animal instincts
musicomh.com: Interview: Jennifer Larmore
Recordings:
Glyndebourne Festival Opera's Lulu
Pierre Boulez's 1979 recording
Books:
Alban Berg: Lulu (Cambridge Opera Handbooks)
The Operas of Alban Berg : Volume 2
Alban Berg: A Guide to Research
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Il Turco in Italia - Bayerische Staatsoper, Prinzregententheater, Munich, 29 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007)
This was the first time I'd been to an opera at 11 in the morning - and Sunday morning at that. The start time led to some dress code confusion. Quite a few were in their regular opera wear - which in Munich includes full evening dress. Elsewhere there were sports sandals and polo shirts.
Perhaps it wasn't so surprising the orchestra started rather sluggishly. As the production started to get the laughs it was seeking, things picked up musically.
Christof Loy's setting is contemporary, but other than that, there's no grand production concept. A series of detailed visual gags supplement the comedy of Rossini's opera. The best set piece was the opening one. It's set in a gypsy camp, here interpreted as a small modern caravan, which aided by a concealed trapdoor spilled out an endless stream of people.
Later on, the Turk of the title entered on a flying carpet. Doors opened in the painted landscape backdrop to reveal a cocktail cabinet. The burly male chorus pranced around the party scene in elegant ballgowns. Trousers were ripped off to reveal boxing shorts. It was that sort of production. And it was rounded off with some heavy-duty hamming from the cast.
The story is a simple one. A Turk arrives in Italy, and has to choose between the affections of the flirtatious housewife Fiorilla, and his former lover, now living with the gypsies, Zaida. It's complicated by competition for Fiorialla from her husband and her current lover, and by an interfering poet, Prosdocimo, who is trying to manipulate events so that he can write a play around them.
Fiorilla (Alexandrina Pendatchanska) gets some very tricky coloratura, which she dispatches competently enough, but mostly without the consonants which would make it intelligible. Her delivery is effortful, and her very wide vibrato grated after a while, but she went down well with the audience.
David Alegret as her lover Narciso was the sole tenor of the piece. He has a light, rather reedy sound well suited to the part, but unfortunately it didn't always carry well, even in the small Prinzregententheater.
Roberto De Candi as Prosdocimo was a Schubert lookalike with an agile bass, and a natural comic able to raise a laugh simply by the way he walked on to the stage.
The Turk, Selim, was played by one of the few Italians on the stage, Simone Alaimo. Like Carlos Chausson as Geronio, he wrung every drop of humour out of his part. They took advantage of their age and portliness with some ridiculous posturing in their squabbling over Fiorilla. Chausson's immaculate quickfire aria O sorte deplorabile deservedly got a huge ovation.
Despite being cruelly wrenched from my bed at an unearthly 9.30 (hey, it's Sunday), I was kept not only awake but smiling. And I didn't even realise I'd missed lunch till the show was over. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday morning.
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