The two new
productions unveiled in the Austrian capital in the second week of November
could not have been more different: a light-hearted, satirical and pop-culture-savvy
Les Pêcheurs de perles at the Theater an der Wien from the young Dutch
director Lotte de Beer, and a boldly austere and powerful—not to mention
musically superb—Khovanshchina at the staatsoper from Lev Dodin, the
long-standing director of St Petersburg’s Maly Theatre.
One of the
main attractions of the Bizet (seen on the first night, November 16) was Diana
Damrau’s Leïla. She gamely threw herself into De Beer’s entertaining conception
of the piece, which dragged its quaint and clunky orientalist plot into the
21st century. Before the opera even started, a TV production crew came onto the
stage and kicked out the Ceylon natives, tearing down their hut and erecting
fake palm trees in readiness for ‘Perlenfischer: The Challenge!’—as Fin Ross’s
projection luridly proclaimed onto a large, round, semi-transparent screen. The
chorus was contained behind that screen, revealed during its numbers as
representative groups of the TV-watching public, glued to the show in
tightly-packed compartments (the set was designed by Marouscha Levy).
There were
hints of The Truman Show in the way the action was manipulated by the
production team, as well as echoes of half a dozen recent reality shows, with
Zurga and Nadir delivering their arias to camera in a hastily-assembled booth,
their super-size faces projected behind. It was all entertaining and
tongue-in-cheek, and done with imagination and flair, if not always the
necessary economy (videos spelling out Zurga and Leïla’s backstory were
entirely superfluous). But it presented the inevitable problems, not least in a
yawning chasm that developed between De Beer’s Konzept, in which
scenario and emotions were presented as so manufactured and manipulated, and
the opera—particularly as the latter started to get serious.
The characters,
already stock and ill defined, inevitably became yet more confusing. On her
arrival, for example, Damrau’s Leïla was pointedly nervous and jittery, getting
ready to play her bizarre role as part love-interest, part celebrity yoga
instructor. The German soprano had to deliver her first aria while
demonstrating her latest yoga routine—an impressive feat, no doubt—and the voice
itself was never less than beautiful, with an effective mixture of creamy
allure and steely core, if not quite the all-out lyrical ease and seductiveness
one might want.
As Nadir,
presented as the winner of the show’s previous series, Dmitry Korchak sang with
a voice that tended to harden at higher volumes, but which was beautifully
flexible and honeyed in the quieter passages; the tenor delivered a meltingly
lyrical account of his romance. There was less vocal allure from Nathan Gunn’s
buff, slightly gruff Zurga, with the phrases often cut a little shorter than
ideal. Nicolas Testé’s suave Nourabad served as the ‘presenter’ of the whole
thing, merrily rhubarb-rhubarbing to camera when he didn’t have actual lines to
sing. The ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien played vibrantly for
Jean-Christophe Spinosi, who offered an efficient, unsentimental reading of the
score.
The Staatsoper’s
Khovanshchina was defined by a seriousness of purpose and sense of
concentration that seemed to be exactly what this great, implacable and
unconsoling work demands (seen at the second performance, on November 18). The
conductor Semyon Bychkov had clearly taken enormous care with the orchestra and
chorus (bolstered by the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus and children of the
Staatsoper’s opera school) and the musical result was plain to hear: the
playing was gloriously refined but also unrestrained in its primal power, the
choruses controlled with the utmost dynamic precision. This was very much a
case of the drama’s iron fist clad in the most velvety of musical gloves,
especially so given Bychkov’s decision to go with Shostakovich’s orchestration
(for the Staatsoper’s previous production, Claudio Abbado had gone for a
hybrid, employing much of Shostakovich’s version but stripping away what were
deemed to be un-Mussorgskian luxuries).
If the
orchestral sound seemed to grow inexorably from beneath the pit, this is more
or less literally what happened with the way that the drama in Dodin’s bald,
unnaturalistic production was presented. Alexander Borovsky’s set arrayed the
action in confined vertical planes, on a pair of gnarly, ramshackle,
multi-level, grid-like structures—the bare, dark planks also gently hinting, it
seemed, at poorly-made crucifixes—which rose out of the stage floor. Further
characters made their appearances out of a central opening downstage. Behind
all of this this stood a rough, tan-coloured wall. In an understatedly poetic
touch, the grids rose up from a flat position during the prelude, returning to
that position and lit to resemble glowing embers once the Old Believers had
made their final descent into the stage (the atmospheric lighting was by Damir
Ismagilov).
The effect
each time as the massed choral ranks materialized impassively from the depths
was powerfully disturbing, as was the way the principals stood alone on their
own level of the structure, or separated—as was most often the case with
Marfa—downstage. Occasionally it bordered on bathos, such as when minor
characters popped up and down rather too swiftly, while the Dance of the
Persian Slave Girls (choreographed by Yury Borovsky) was also somewhat
unconvincing.
The way in
which the principals were, by and large, prevented from interacting, delivering
their words to the audience rather than each other, might have irritated some,
as might also, conceivably, the closing spectacle of Dosifey, Andrey Khovansky,
Marfa and the Old Believers rooted to the spot and stripping down to their
white undergarments. For me, however, it only emphasized the disciplined
austerity of Dodin’s conception of the piece—its stark, unflinching poetic
imagery reflecting the political and personal structures from which its
characters are unable to escape.
As Dosifey,
Ain Anger was enormously impressive: a tall, imposing stage presence, he rolled
out his phrases in a generous, beautiful bass, mixing dignity and dangerous
charisma in his characterization. Ferruccio Furlanetto, in terrific voice, made
an authoritative, care-worn Ivan Khovansky, acting with understated nobility.
Andrzej Dobber’s dark, menacing Shaklovity was outstanding, sung with smooth,
plangent tone. Elena Maximova brought a gorgeously plummy, tangy mezzo to
Marfa, whose Act 3 aria—gently adorned by Shostakovich’s jewel-like
glockenspiel—was a highlight. Lydia Rathkolb was a vibrant, clear-voiced
Susanna. Herbert Lippert was a bitingly emphatic Golitsyn, Norbert Ernst a
vivid Scribe, and Christopher Ventris robust as Andrey Khovansky. They, and
others I’ve not space to mention, all helped make this a memorable, powerful
evening.
Finally to
Otto Schenk’s nearly-new Staatsoper production of The Cunning Little
Vixen, which opened in June—the veteran director said at the time that it
would be his final production for the house—but which was not covered in these
pages at the time. On its return in the autumn (seen on November 17), it had to
do without Franz Welser-Möst. He was replaced in the pit by Tomáš Netopil, who
certainly knew how to bring out all the shimmering, quivering detail of
Janáček’s glorious score. He hadn’t quite mastered bringing that out without
occasionally overwhelming his singers, however, with some of the exchanges
between Chen Reiss’s clear-voiced Vixen and Hyuna Ko’s appealing Fox getting
lost in the melee. This was less of an issue for Gerald Finley’s
beautifully-sung Forester, who oozed thoughtfulness and gentle melancholy.
There were vivid contributions from Donna Ellen as his wife, James Kryshak
(Schoolmaster) and Wolfgang Bankl (Harašta); Heinz Zednik made a wonderful
(tenor) Rooster.
Schenk’s
production is a predictably lavish, old-fashioned affair, in which a vast and
extraordinarily realistic forest set (designed by Amra Buchbinder) is a
permanent feature—think of the director’s long-serving Met Rusalka minus
the pond. There are no scene changes as such, and other locations are evoked
with an incongruous sparingness by the straightforward addition of extra
scenery downstage. The lavish animal costumes for the children are initially
enchanting, but with all the arm-waving and bouncing up and down, the whole
thing did risk resembling the world’s most expensive school play. The final minutes
are beautifully and powerfully staged as a moment of blinding revelation (with
help from Emmerich Steigberger’s lighting), but Schenk’s overall interpretation
of the piece, though loving, feels too straightforward, too resolutely bright
and bushy-tailed.
