If there's one thing all the reviewers agreed on, it's that Calixto Bieito's new production of Platée is super-popular with Stuttgart operagoers.
Bieito has set Rameau's baroque comedy gem in a Studio 54 style temple of 70s hedonism, with the titular nymph (played by a man) an oddly Thatcheresque figure in a blue wrap dress.
It looks from the photos (more below) as if his trademark bare-all approach has given way to family-friendly oversized prosthetics - at least this time.
| | |
|
Ope Tuttgart?
Not quite.
This is the new logo for Oper Stuttgart, commissioned for 'a five figure sum' by incoming artistic director Jossi Wieler to mark the start of his reign.
| | |
|
Parsifal - Staatsoper Stuttgart, 1 April 2010
At last I get around to writing this one up, but first the story about how I almost - almost - didn't make it to the show at all.
I booked a ticket in advance. The Stuttgart set-up is that you submit a request, then exactly one month before the performance date, they email you to say you've been allocated a ticket (though not the exact seat number). You then collect your ticket at the theatre. You can't choose your seat, or have your ticket posted - that's just the way it works.
| | |
|
Who needs costumes when you've got cling film?
It's Mad Max Parsifal. From Calixto Bieto's new Stuttgart production (which opens this Sunday, 28 March), here's Parsifal (tenor Andrew Richards) and the flower maidens.
Conductor and Stuttgart boss Manfred Honeck recently told the German press that Richards (who is making his role debut) will be the go-to Parsifal for the next ten years. So no pressure then.
Klingsor and his magic flame-throwing underpants. Claudio Otelli (Klingsor):
********* more on next page ********
Continue reading "first photos of Bieito's Stuttgart Parsifal - now with added grail" »
| | |
|
Human flesh is on the menu and shirts are nowhere to be seen. Yes, details are emerging of Calixto Bieito's new production of Parsifal, which premieres on 28 March in Stuttgart.
"Apocalyptic sentiment and questions of meaning" are his main concerns. The setting is a society in material and spiritual collapse, inspired by Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road. "Designer Susanne Gschwender creates a destroyed landscape covered by ash, where a ruined motorway bridge is the only evidence of a bygone civilisation. Mercè Paloma provides the characters with an existential basic outfit: protection from heat, cold and pollution".
That's the konzept, but what is the reality?
"I'm tied to a spit and Kundry is sniffing my armpit," is how the American tenor Andrew Richards, who will play Parsifal, describes one of the rehearsal scenes in his fabulous and revealing blog, Opera Rocks. Bieito's staging, which "promises to be a very controversial telling" includes cannibalism and a flower maiden scene that made Richards feel "nearly unclean". The physicality means he "can hardly move each morning I wake up".
He may be shirtless, but at least, Richards promises, his pants stay on. His one word for the production? "Intense".
| | |
|
Orphée et Euridice - Staatsoper Stuttgart, 29 December 2009
With a world-famous ballet company on their doorstep, you might think Stuttgart Opera would be gagging to work with them but, no, Orphée et Euridice (sic) is their first ever co-production, and it premiered this summer to a generally positive reaction. There's enough of each to satisfy both opera and ballet fans, instantly doubling the potential audience, always a bonus in these difficult times. It looked sold out or thereabouts on the night I visited, with interval snacks plucked from a steaming cauldron of d1ldo sized boiled sausages in the first floor salon perhaps an additional temptation for some.
Choreographer/director Christian Spuck selected Gluck's longer, later and now rarely performed 1774 Paris version (though I think with some of the original orchestration retained) because there are more ballets in between the singing. But rather than than alternating the two, he's joined the ballet sequences to the musical drama and the singers to the dancers, creating a seamless sung/danced drama. The ballets accompany, expand and comment on the simple, direct narrative rather than interrupting it. The singers are choregraphed too - it took a while to tell corps and chorus apart until I clocked that the dancers have muscles where the singers have breath support.
One of the difficulties of staging the Paris version is that Gluck's story ends conclusively with Eurydice revived and married to Orpheus - but then there's a 15 minute ballet to finish with. How to handle this? Spuck uses it to puncture Gluck's happy ending. His final ballet mirrors his opening one. In the middle of the wedding celebrations, Eurydice falls writhing to the floor - and once more Orpheus is mourning his lost love. It becomes clear the whole story was a dream, a journey of the mind, perhaps a way of coming to terms with grief. Unfortunately for Spuck, Gluck's relentlessly jolly music undermines a potentially interesting and structurally satisfying idea.
A spare, effective design sets all the action in a decrepit ballroom. Orpheus is surrounded by a mass of mourners in dark sparkling evening wear. They transform into furies for a spectacular whirling ballet, recostume in all-white for the Elysian scenes, then return to their party gear for the end. It looks beautiful but often cluttered, diffusing what should be the most emotionally penetrating moments by turning them into crowd scenes. The journey out of the underworld, where Orpheus is accompanied only by eight lookalike Eurydices, is the most simply staged scene and perhaps because of that is the most poignant and memorable. On the other hand, Amor's appearance as a burlesque queen surrounded by blindfolded ballet boys in sequinned hotpants is arresting for all the wrong reasons.
The standard of singing was very much what you'd expect from a German regional opera company, not exactly world-class but more than competent and often surprisingly good. This performance's Orpheus was Kenneth Tarver (though Luciano Botelho is the tenor shown in the production photos). His secure, even tone and superb breath control were ideally suited to the slow, wrenching music, less so to the single coloratura aria with its demands on quickfire accuracy. Alla Kravchuk and Catriona Smith doubled as Eurydice, which as they sound and in costume even look very alike seemed inexplicably redundant. A few harsh notes didn't detract from the charm of Yuko Kakuta's bubbly Amor. The chorus looked good, moved well, and hit all the right notes, but I couldn't identify one single word they sang all night.
Nicholas Kok performed the remarkable task of keeping orchestra, dancers and singers together at a lively pace, though the number of intonation problems, phrasing variations and plain simple errors from the violins made me wonder if the regular orchestra was bolstered with unseasoned seasonal stand-ins.
***** more photos plus video and audio on next page *****
| | |
|
Der Rosenkavalier - Staatsoper Stuttgart, 27 November 2009
You might think the last thing the lengthy Der Rosenkavalier needs is even more music, but Stefan Herheim cheekily pre-empts its prelude with disorientating electronica. In a star-pricked, lavishly draped boudoir, a fading Diana Dors figure contemplates her vanished looks in a dressing table mirror.
Just when I wondered if I'd come on the wrong night by mistake, she furiously thrust her fist through its mirror and Strauss's music began. Horned and hairy priapic satyrs erupt from a giant frieze depicting the rape of Europa. One Pan-like creature fashions a silver rose from the broken mirror shards. They ravish the Marschallin to the famous brassy calls until an Apollonian Octavian descends from the skies to rescue her from the clutches of Dionysian abandon.
This is, needless to say, not the usual comedy of manners - the opulent rococo costuming is deceptive. Herheim's Rosenkavalier employs the primal forms of myth and symbol to explore the Freudian world of unconscious desire revealed by dreams. The unfulfilled Marschallin, tied by social etiquette, seeks satisfaction of her innermost desires in the unbound and illogical realm of fantasy. In this ideal world, she doesn't even have to choose between sex and chocolate - the page boy Mohammed, revealed as another randy satyr, takes her from behind as he delivers her breakfast.
The action is played out beneath a giant version of the Marschallin's blue crinoline, and just to make that clear it's doubled in miniature puppet form in the first act. Sophie is the Marschallin's younger self, and Mariandel yet another side. The bull-horned and horny Ochs (Ochs is German for ox/bull) wreaks Dionysian disruption with his satyr servants and their flapping rubber genitals. The court too have an animal side, establishing character instantly and brilliantly. Faninal and Sophie's maid are preening poultry, the notary a poodle, Valzacchi and Annina a cockroach and a moth, and the servants turn round to reveal sheep's heads behind. The only creature which doesn't quite work is the occasionally interposed pun-too-far of Strauss himself as a pantomime ostrich (Strauss is German for ostrich).
Of course the opera is about more than the Marschallin. Strauss and Hofmannsthal viewed a Europe at the end of an era, on the brink of decay, mirrored in Ochs's unbridled excesses. The painting of the Rape of Europa hanging behind is a constant reminder. Can his third act lesson teach Ochs anything? Guillotined heads on poles and Annina's uniformed gas-masked children bear witness to the savageries of Europe's past and the still worse carnage yet to come. Ochs tries and fails to strangle 'Strauss' the panto ostrich like Rod Hull grappling with Emu (the mostly German audience sat straight faced, enraptured; I was dying). But he is ultimately defeated - the golden stars beneath the Marschallin's blue skirt are echoed in her triumphant final deus-ex-machina entry as the incarnation of Europa and the end of the panto nonsense. Ochs disappears into the skies, rocket-propelled, discharged to outer space.
As Sophie and Octavian are finally united, the Marschallin and Faninal join the audience in the boxes wearing everyday costume. Now it's Pan who's weeping as he stuffs his face with the mirror-rose he made, expiring bloody and writhing as the reactionary and sentimental emerge victorious. Herheim may love the opera, but he's disappointed in Strauss.
If all this makes it sound as if Herheim has replaced Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier with something of his own invention, nothing could be further from the truth. The action respects every turn of the music, and in many cases mimics it structurally. The most overt parody-waltzes are accompanied by knowing unison swaying. When it's time for the big numbers - the presentation of the rose, the final trio - he clears the stage and there's nothing to detract from clearly-presented motive and devastating emotional impact. The libretto may be used ingeniously, but it's never ignored. Neither is the emotional or physical direction that the music implies. Quite simply, it all rings true.
If there's one criticism which could be fairly levelled, it's that some of the smaller moments are not as touching as they might be. That's because Herheim chooses to expose the sentimentality rather than wallow in it - and it could be argued that because Strauss's sentimentality in Rosenkavalier is both conscious and intentional, it should be swallowed whole.
Manfred Honeck whipped up his excellent orchestra with an equal lack of saccharine fluff and a driving pace. Fantastically bold colouring, confidently varied dynamics and daring rubato complemented the hallucinatory visuals, detail swimming in and out of focus.
It's hard to pick a standout amongst the excellent cast, most of whom surpassed their bigger-name counterparts in the recent Covent Garden production. Mojca Erdmann was the only name I recognised. Her Sophie was beautifully-voiced though lacking in colour. Christiane Iven's blowsy Marschallin wasn't quite as elegant but she really held the stage, with even the second act scented by her presence. Marina Prudenskaja's darkly poised mezzo complemented a frighteningly convincing physical portrayal of Octavian, and she wasn't afraid to let rip and squawk her way through Mariandel. Lars Woldt's Ochs was strangely likeable despite his oafish excesses, and clearly a bumpkin (as the directions suggest) rather than a boor (as we usually get).
What a pity there were such a large number of technical problems on the night I visited. Curtains that wouldn't close, curtains that wouldn't open, drapes that snagged on ladders, failing lights, and assorted bumps, bangs and crashes all evening. It's a busy production that must make a lot of technical demands but these were basic issues.
***** more photos on next page *****
Continue reading "Stefan Herheim's dream Rosenkavalier in Stuttgart" »
| | |
|
Recent Comments