Intermezzo

coming up

A few events that may have slipped beneath your radar:

If you missed out in the ticket scrum for Esa-Pekka Salonen's Philharmonia Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Festival Hall with Gary Lehman and Violeta Urmana, you might consider travelling to Birmingham Symphony Hall (where the sound is also immeasurably better) on 23 September 2010 for the UK premiere.  Not many tickets left so don't hang around too long.

Birmingham is also the furthest south that Opera North will bring their new Das Rheingold (semi-staged) next summer. It's on 24 June 2011 and there are plenty of tickets left at the time of writing, though the best are going fast.

Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera House orchestra take a rare step outside Covent Garden on 27 February 2011 when they perform at Cadogan Hall. Thomas Hampson and ~Klaus Florian Vogt~ join them for the chamber version of Das Lied von der Erde, with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll also on the bill. Tickets went on sale yesterday.

Lulu - rinse and repeat

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.

 

 

 

Lulu: Royal Opera House (nm)

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  **************

Nagano dissects Mahler in Paris

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal - Salle Pleyel, Paris, 28 April 2009

The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal haven't visited France for a while, which might account for a less than packed-out Salle Pleyel. Indeed the Salle Pleyel were marketing this concert largely on the back of soloist Klaus Florian Vogt's knockout performance in last year's Lohengrin.  But music director Kent Nagano's mission to raise the orchestra's international profile has resulted in a short European tour (the UK is off the list), of which this was the last but one date.

The result was taut and accomplished playing all round, ensemble sharpened by repeated performance. Details positively sparkled in the first two of Debussy's Nocturnes, Nuages and Fêtes.

Tan Dun's Orchestral Theatre 1:O followed. This 1990 composition is far more interesting than the tired oriental cliches he's been peddling recently. The O is for Origin, and the piece recreates a shamanic ritual symphonically with minimalist textures and odd sonorities evocative of traditional Chinese instruments. Col legno strings provide a rattling percussive backbone, and the orchestra sigh, shout and grunt en masse, an effect which provoked a few unsuppressable titters around me. Still, it was hypnotically fascinating, and very well-received.

The Chinese theme was picked up again in the second half with Das Lied von der Erde. The soloists were Christian Gerhaher and Klaus Florian Vogt, two singers I admire hugely, but very different from each other. Gerhaher is one of today's great lieder singers, with a rich colour palette and a fanatically detailed approach to text. Vogt on the other hand is pure sonority, a voice with the abstract qualities of a musical instrument. It was never clear quite what Nagano hoped to achieve from this odd marriage, apart from a clearly-delineated break between songs.

The Tan Dun piece proved a canny entrée, as Nagano's reflective reading underlined the novelty of Mahler's scoring. Carefully nuanced detail was laid out coolly and clearly - no red-blooded romanticism here. But Nagano wasn't afraid of unleashing the full power of the orchestra either, a little to the detriment of the first song, Das Trinklied, where a slightly tired-sounding Klaus Florian Vogt struggled to be heard. Neither this nor Der Trunkene im Frühling were ideally matched to his elevated qualities of luminous clarity and effortlessly exquisite tone. But his Von der Jugend was as near perfect as it gets.

A scarily intense Christian Gerhaher demonstrated the real reason this cycle is usually attemped by an alto rather than a baritone - it's simply too hard and too high. Gerhaher nailed every note perfectly, but it was touch and go, with the effort at the top particularly apparent. But this was another fine performance from him - always attentive to words, his immaculately-crafted phrasing was particularly telling in the lied-like Der Abschied.

It was overall an idiosyncratic reading that split the audience two ways - a minority of ostentatious coughers and fidgeters who dashed for the doors the minute Nagano's baton dropped, and a far greater number of enthusiasts whose applause brought conductor and soloists back to the stage at least six times - I lost count.

 Christian Gerhaher mit Mahler tribute haircut:
 

Klaus Florian Vogt:
 

 

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?): 

 

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