tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61352352943603364082024-02-21T11:03:24.121+00:00Fatal ConclusionsReflections, Reviews and News from the worlds of Opera and Classical MusicHugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-59912612715804267052018-01-22T14:29:00.001+00:002018-01-22T14:29:30.776+00:00Komische Oper Berlin: Don Giovanni19 January 2018<br />
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Just a week after catching up with Claus Guth’s <a href="http://hugoshirley.blogspot.de/2018/01/staatsoper-berlin-don-giovanni.html">staging</a> at
the Staatsoper, I managed see the other staging of the work currently to be seen off
Unter den Linden in Berlin. The contrast could hardly be greater:
if Guth’s might be described as hyper-realist, Herbert Fritsch’s at the
Komische Oper is, well, maybe hyper-unrealist—it’s certainly hyper something.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQVuH_eeeQ8tjtLjrylprYgDCuPsR_sYrqaUyOFtLNEzspH-YIM0uymiMgKBlYp5RGENvX9MHE19gd1jf8vhclXzgvYacoIFgUQvjb63u19U8YQTucN6rVJnQiinA4m-3lWSJHum1Or8/s1600/1072_kob_giovanni_301_foto_monikarittershaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="1600" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQVuH_eeeQ8tjtLjrylprYgDCuPsR_sYrqaUyOFtLNEzspH-YIM0uymiMgKBlYp5RGENvX9MHE19gd1jf8vhclXzgvYacoIFgUQvjb63u19U8YQTucN6rVJnQiinA4m-3lWSJHum1Or8/s640/1072_kob_giovanni_301_foto_monikarittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni in Herbert Fritsch's Komische Oper production (Photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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The director, long a member a of Frank Castorf’s ensemble at
the Volksbühne, offers up a show that is undeniably stunning in its execution,
a gleeful mixture of the exaggerated and the anarchic, brilliantly realised by
an ensemble cast. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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In an elliptical interview in the programme, he offers what feels like a preemptory rebuke to anyone trying to define—or
judge—what he’s doing within traditional parameters. He talks of ‘freedom in
art’ not necessarily meaning that, to quote his own unstinting language, ‘I can
defecate here [on stage], or get undressed or masturbate there.’ </div>
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Rather, he says, ‘freedom
in art means also the free appreciation of art.’ The audience should be allowed
this freedom too, he adds, ‘and therefore there’s no way that I’m going to tell
you what I’m planning or am going to do with my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don Giovanni </i>production.’ <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s not easy to explain what he <i>has </i>done either, especially
for someone only very sketchily versed in the specific local theatrical
traditions that he calls on. In terms of the production as we see it, though,
the first shock comes in the apparent lack of the overture, displaced, it later
becomes clear, to burst onto the scene between the exit of Donna Anna and Don
Ottavio and the arrival of Donna Elvira. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At that point, too, the open space of the stage—empty but
for a bar heater—fills with lacy flats that bob gently about for most of the
rest of the evening; there are barely any props otherwise. Victoria Behr’s
costumes suggest Spain and the broader Spanish-speaking world, offering up a fair
amount of lurid, kitschy colours. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzzV6nxD-B6-HAoQlvzKMQVCPlA6T0tRAQ9GeCY69h-PXKoHYymSh9Nw_NJmRECd43Cunh76iZ4cnphOuA9X5s-goKQWKVXue2Q8h9TTDJz2xuzoHMHBnf6OCNEyIYtJZJ8C3mMJ6kjs8/s1600/1071_kob_giovanni_283_foto_monikarittershaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1011" data-original-width="1600" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzzV6nxD-B6-HAoQlvzKMQVCPlA6T0tRAQ9GeCY69h-PXKoHYymSh9Nw_NJmRECd43Cunh76iZ4cnphOuA9X5s-goKQWKVXue2Q8h9TTDJz2xuzoHMHBnf6OCNEyIYtJZJ8C3mMJ6kjs8/s640/1071_kob_giovanni_283_foto_monikarittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Günter Papendell as Don Giovani (Photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Act 1’s stage musicians appear in full Mariachi gear (they
return in incongruous white tie in Act 2). The chorus shuffle around in their
own colourful, over-the-top costumes with a mixture of skip and tiptoe. Lea-ann
Dunbar’s terrific Donna Anna, perhaps not entirely inappropriately, presents
us with parody of stock </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">opera seria</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
gestures. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Masetto, Don Giovanni and Zerlina <br />(Photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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Rarely has the ineffectiveness of Don Ottavio (the sweet-voiced
Stefan Cifolelli) been more cruelly underlined, even if the character here is given
a strangely endearing semi-earnest foppishness. </div>
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Donna Elvira (an impressive
Karolina Gumos) is all fierce frilly frock and flounce. A special mention, too,
for Önay Köse’s sonorous Commendatore, presented here as yet another
ineffectual flounderer. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the centre of it all there are unflinchingly concentrated
performances from Günter Papendell as Giovanni and Evan Hughes as Leporello:
the former played, together with grotesque make-up, smiles and grimaces, and
straggly blond wig <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">à la</i> Heath Ledger
as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman </i>Joker; the later as
capaciously pantalooned semi-clown. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The energy they communicate together is irresistible: faces
in constant movement, their relationship with one another and the audience in
constant flux, recits (we heard Sabrina Zwach’s smart German translation)
delivered with sped-up objectivity one moment, leaden deliberateness the next.
Without such commitment and energy from the performers it would fall flat; here, though, it was impossible not to be drawn in and dragged along with it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Inevitably, however, this sort of approach reveals only one
facet of the opera, and arguably only a small part of that facet. Caring about
any of these characters goes out of the window, while things become
increasingly problematic the further we get into the second act: this
Giovanni’s damnation—sinking into a hole in the stage beneath an illuminated
pointy hand—inevitably counts for very little. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CQhAudjZS7k/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CQhAudjZS7k?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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I was also surprised that, like Guth’s production, Fritsch
had done away with the final sextet, which surely would have fitted, even
helped, his approach—although I fully concede that I might not have fully
understand the underlying aims of that approach. </div>
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I’d also have thought,
especially given the production’s fast-and-loose way with the score (several
numbers get stuttering false starts, for example, to underline the various
characters’ ineffectiveness), that the director would have opted for the
concision of the Prague version. we instead got what was essentially the
standard Prague-Vienna mix, conducted with verve by Anthony Bramall, in what can hardly be a straightforward assignment for a conductor.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This certainly isn’t one for purists, then, and clearly a
one-dimensional view of this multi-dimensional masterpiece. But in some ways a
staging every bit as compelling as Guth’s. They complement each other fascinatingly.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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</style>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-2202138915449502012018-01-21T15:41:00.000+00:002018-01-22T14:23:30.769+00:00Staatsoper Hannover: Die Zauberflöte<div class="MsoNormal">
16 January 2018</div>
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The idea that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die
Zauberflöte </i>is a ‘children’s opera’ is of course a ridiculous one, even if,
in many respects, it ends up being about children (an idea that was picked up
and developed in Goethe’s aborted attempt at a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">zweiter Teil</i>). Nonetheless it seems—in Germany especially—often to be the first
opera children get to see, and it was certainly encouraging to hear the lobbies
of Staatsoper Hannover <span style="font-size: 12pt;">resound to the pitter-patter of teeny feet as local
children flooded the place for this second performance of Frank Hilbrich’s new
production.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZn9sYY5mxeoJtlSkrY8dWbEQTDUjmUZrn7-Lne2CKI3ZnPdluaT0N2UgPhxu5Pg9TSjQ7MbEcRZOJFr6nLzguZ49MBUTDoSJpTNvgCn2VYU8vE9OEzkG8mTjzfS2mT-_z3ULVsRuOl0k/s1600/1515856588_zauberfloete006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZn9sYY5mxeoJtlSkrY8dWbEQTDUjmUZrn7-Lne2CKI3ZnPdluaT0N2UgPhxu5Pg9TSjQ7MbEcRZOJFr6nLzguZ49MBUTDoSJpTNvgCn2VYU8vE9OEzkG8mTjzfS2mT-_z3ULVsRuOl0k/s640/1515856588_zauberfloete006.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Die Zauberflöte at the Staatsoper Hannover (Photo © Jörg Landsberg)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Things didn’t get off to a good start when a technical
problem delayed the start by 20 minutes, but the centrality of children in the
production was immediately emphasised during the overture. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Staged overtures usually, of course, inspire a fair amount of eye-rolling. <span style="font-size: 12pt;">Here it proves joyous and difficult to resist, however, as a group of
garishly attired kids on a revolve enthusiastically mime scraping and huffing
and puffing their way through the piece on a variety of instruments.</span></div>
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Before that, we had seen Tamino clamber into a bed far
downstage left. He then wakes up in his opening aria to grapple with a cuddly snake
subsequent torn to pieces by the three ladies.<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I wondered whether the whole
thing was being staged as his dream (the first subheading in a vaguely updated
synopsis in the programme suggested that </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">might
</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">have been the case) but if it was, it was hardly a fact that was made
obvious beyond that opening gambit.</span></div>
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There is consistency, however, in the way the central role of the children is further underlined when
the troupe of kids return to the stage each time the Three Boys (here three
girls) appear. At the end we even see Sarastro and his entourage—in stiff
plastic wigs and grey Bond-villain smocks—musicked into submission by them. This brotherhood clearly prefers a <i>Land ohne Musik</i>; in the Act 1 finale they dump instrument cases into a hole in the stage. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ania Vegry (Pamina) and Pawel Brozek (Monostatos)<br />
(Photo © Jörg Landsberg)</td></tr>
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In an interview in the programme, Hilbrich (if I
understand him correctly) places music into a broader historical and societal
context when he argues that opera itself played a similar role for Germany,
especially during the country’s development during the 19th century, as music
does for the characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die
Zauberflöte</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And these ideas by themselves are far from bad. The problem is that the staging itself is messy and extremely poorly focused, throwing in far too many further
ideas that one struggles to keep track of, let alone unravel, interpret and
make any sense of. </div>
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Stefan Heyne’s set features a pointy-textured gold back wall and a central revolve with a cylinder that can be raised or lowered;
Julia Müer’s costumes mix austere greys with the garish and ghastly. </div>
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The whole
thing is as ugly as it sounds. The production’s tone, too, is unpredictable,
its occasional attempts to impose a dramatic realism distinctly jarring: a self-harming (I think) Queen of the Night, a particularly
handsy Monastatos and charred corpses revealed unzipped from body bags for the
trial by fire mingle uneasily with the celebration of joyful, exuberant youth we get elsewhere. </div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">There wasn’t much good news musically either at this
performance, a fact clearly not helped by the (unannounced) replacement of the
first night’s Tamino and Papageno. Martin Homrich took over as Tamino and sang
with an impressive heroic voice which, though far from ideally controlled for
Mozart, could well be one to watch as it develops in bigger repertoire. Byung
Kweon Jun made an eminently likeable Papageno, but both he and Homrich
required a fair bit of help from an audible prompter.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matthias Winckhler & Simon Bode, the first-night Papageno & Tamino (left & centre), with Tobias Schabel (right, Sarastro) (Photo © Jörg Landsberg)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ania Vegry made a fine, moving Pamina, her performance
blossoming into an outstanding ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’. Dorothea Maria Marx offered a
very respectable Queen of the Night, able to negotiate the role’s stratospheric
demands cleanly. Tobias Schabel’s Sarastro (at one point removing his smock to
reveal Amfortas-like bandages) lacked vocal authority, but there was a
reassuringly sparky Papagena from Yiva Stenberg.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Her duet with Jun, though, was just one of several occasions
where pit and stage threatened to part ways. The conductor Valtteri Rauhalammi did
a good job of rectifying those errors, and there was certainly pleasure to be
derived from the playing of the orchestra, but such synchronisation issues and
scrappiness should never really have been happening in the first place. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-81914181348708727242018-01-16T09:22:00.001+00:002018-01-16T09:57:38.638+00:00Staatsoper Berlin: Don GiovanniStaatsoper unter den Linden, 13 January 2018<br />
<br />
It’s sobering to think that Claus Guth’s <i>Don Giovanni</i> is now a decade old. It was first unveiled in Salzburg in 2008, made it to the Staatsoper (im Schiller Theater) in Berlin in 2012 and has now made it to the Staatsoper (unter den Linden) as one of a first clutch of revivals in the renovated house.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRHB8HUgxKQekviNPmBseok5ic10Mm1VIdKSi2b-M1NEKRqHN-weW9T0I8JFR2-F-YtMF8kXZECL6mBt_sfAVp7ODyY86h_06KB-9wJIIHLsNvJiS8Fk0hBWG0DfdOilDbCZc27feJWQ/s1600/giovanni_b_156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1031" data-original-width="1600" height="411" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRHB8HUgxKQekviNPmBseok5ic10Mm1VIdKSi2b-M1NEKRqHN-weW9T0I8JFR2-F-YtMF8kXZECL6mBt_sfAVp7ODyY86h_06KB-9wJIIHLsNvJiS8Fk0hBWG0DfdOilDbCZc27feJWQ/s640/giovanni_b_156.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper (Photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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This was the first time I’d seen the production in the flesh. It had bowled me over on Blu-ray (filmed at Salzburg), but critical reaction to it in the theatre had seemed a little more muted.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcdCPqq4hxnkBtz7ciNe3_L7zoiPJeqMk2fZgpy_kIPijmDAaroYP8_bgjhpbgbcEG39kZrcHgUmG6_sC5fmNhqNDIBvmLekezCpJmHjemqyLRN2tPplFpk67CiVS8moOmr9D1sYQ95Y/s1600/IMG-3009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1153" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcdCPqq4hxnkBtz7ciNe3_L7zoiPJeqMk2fZgpy_kIPijmDAaroYP8_bgjhpbgbcEG39kZrcHgUmG6_sC5fmNhqNDIBvmLekezCpJmHjemqyLRN2tPplFpk67CiVS8moOmr9D1sYQ95Y/s320/IMG-3009.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Perhaps the staging’s cinematic nature—shades of <i>Shallow Grave</i>, <i>Blood Simple</i> and any number of films I dimly remember featuring holes dug in woods by the light of headlamps—made it especially effective on the screen, where the detail of the acting of Christopher Maltman’s Giovanni and, in particular, Erwin Schrott’s tic-addled, jittery Leporello could be shown in compelling close-up.<br />
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It seems the intensity and detail of the production has meant several principals have stuck with their roles over the years (in contrast to conveyor-belt one has seen in Covent Garden’s recent productions, for example), and it certainly feels unusual to find three veterans from Salzburg in the cast here.<br />
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Maltman’s Giovanni remains a dangerously compelling presence. He’s still in good shape, and the voice, which has tackled several larger roles in the interim, was probably the most authoritative and imposing on the stage.<br />
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It’s an impressive characterisation, even if he didn’t here quite manage the same hushed interiority he brought earlier to the Serenade, memorably staged as a touching reminiscence of earlier happiness—an idea pinched in at least one subsequent production that I’ve seen.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8SiA4-oUyPH57ZMoOvDi6ZRUJRDLbo31AEe9np_SP3Bfu0lwvw4_8TH6vizHvzQQ7LI_81y-i58q1kPR3T8qcRus0MJQy46Twb0rw9in5e1RFy7fuEeGXFnV1NHOupgFUIWXNosz4L4/s1600/IMG-3010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="1484" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8SiA4-oUyPH57ZMoOvDi6ZRUJRDLbo31AEe9np_SP3Bfu0lwvw4_8TH6vizHvzQQ7LI_81y-i58q1kPR3T8qcRus0MJQy46Twb0rw9in5e1RFy7fuEeGXFnV1NHOupgFUIWXNosz4L4/s200/IMG-3010.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Dorothea Röschmann, <span style="text-align: center;">another Salzburg veteran, sings with her usual intensity and commitment as a Donna Elvira irresistible as characterisation if not as a character. Her state, very much as woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, is cleverly underlined throughout, not least when she first appears, impatiently checking a bus timetable, desperate to get on with a journey heading, one suspects, nowhere in particular. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">This Donna Elvira reflects the production itself brilliantly: everyone is stuck in the spinning forest of Christian Schmidt’s set, a space from which there’s no escape (and which would incidentally do excellent service in an especially nightmarish production of <i>Hänsel und Gretel</i>).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTofyiT9R7PTDzXIIdGb4BprTJRwMdBaAMBw6oKIwbEXR68NM-Ogci1qlaBlBJgnMV2h5ttnXmhv7yu0aVR0l2qVMSZukTV-ermxR3uVSzaDCNgJ_rZrJaNBHBc8C9LOPwqiOT-u0FWvY/s1600/giovanni_b_132.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTofyiT9R7PTDzXIIdGb4BprTJRwMdBaAMBw6oKIwbEXR68NM-Ogci1qlaBlBJgnMV2h5ttnXmhv7yu0aVR0l2qVMSZukTV-ermxR3uVSzaDCNgJ_rZrJaNBHBc8C9LOPwqiOT-u0FWvY/s640/giovanni_b_132.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anna Prohaska (Zerlina), Dorothea Röschmann (Donna Elvira) and Maria Bengtsson (Donna Anna)<br />
(Photo © Monika Rittershaus) </td></tr>
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Some of the rest of the casting was a little less persuasive. Maria Bengtsson was stretched as Donna Anna, and though Mikhail Petrenko does a very good job as Leporello, he can’t quite match Schrott’s charisma in a characterisation tailored to the Uruguayan bass’s talents. Petrenko’s voice, moreover, is short on the buffo fruitiness and basic volume that the role requires. Jan Martiník’s gentle bass, similarly, is not ideally suited to the Commendatore’s granitic pronouncements.<br />
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I’ve admired Paolo Fanale in Mozart before—particularly in the Deutsche Oper’s <i>Così fan Tutte</i> last season—but he was also stretched here as Don Ottavio, the lovely openness of the voice often turning to rawness. Grigory Shkarupa unveiled a healthy bass voice as Masetto, while it was a luxury to have a Anna Prohaska bringing intelligence, subtlety and sparkle to Zerlina (she was the third of the Salzburg veterans).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper (Photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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She was not the only one, however, who seemed to be held back by Alessandro De Marchi’s conducting, which favoured lucidity above weight and drive, drawing playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin that was often short on dramatic thrust and fire—until the Supper Scene, at least. And in this production, of course, the Supper Scene is also the Final Scene, with the concluding sextet apparently deemed incompatible with Guth’s fiercely concentrated vision.<br />
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It’s a decision that raises all sorts of questions: a return to a 19th-century tradition that itself feels incompatible with certain aspects of the production—the lack of any visual response to the famous chords that announce the Commendatore’s arrival, for example—as well as the conducting, which certainly short-changed us here on big-r Romanticism. I’d not been too bothered by the omission on the small-screen, where the drama on the whole had felt more intense; here I was left feeling a great deal more unsatisfied.<br />
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Inevitably, too, the production itself has lost some of its striking contemporariness, as well as some of its sharpness, over the years. It remains in many ways, though, an exciting and superbly executed piece of theatre.<br />
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-9695942606065791172017-12-20T13:34:00.000+00:002017-12-20T13:58:07.096+00:00Operatic Alternatives in Berlin: Puccini's Toaster and Crowe's Bacon<i>Puccini's Toaster: </i>Winterreise <i>– Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi, 17 December 2017</i><br />
<i>Puccini's Toaster: </i>The Old Maid and the Thief <i>etc. – Tangoloft, Berlin, 22 November 2017</i><br />
<i>Stephen Crowe: </i>Francis Bacon Opera<i> – Acker Stadt Palast, 27 October 2017</i><br />
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The ‘official’ operatic offering is so rich in Berlin that I’ve found myself slow to explore the city’s alternative scene. But it’s got to the stage in the year when I compile lists of New Year’s Resolutions, and one of them for 2018 will be to explore more of what the German capital has to offer beyond its three main opera houses. I might even be a resolution I’ll be able—and want—to keep to. As a first step, I thought I’d share some thoughts on three ‘alternative’ operatic events I’ve been to over the last couple of months.<br />
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I start with the most recent, the latest venture by the enterprising Puccini’s Toaster, an event that was perhaps not strictly operatic, but which was, as far as anyone seems to know, a first: a performance of Schubert’s <i><b>Winterreise</b></i> that featured a different singer for each song. Twenty-four singers; 24 songs. Wisely, the presentation was also strictly non-operatic, as straightforward as possible: chairs for the singers were arrayed in a semi-circle around the piano, each singer simply stepping up in turn—no acknowledging each other or the audience.<br />
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It was certainly felt like the best way to go about it, and to instil such discipline on two-dozen singers—shades of herding cats, one imagines—certainly speaks volumes for Puccini’s Toaster’s resident director, Caroline Staunton, and music director, Rebecca Lang. The whole event, meanwhile, spoke volumes about how well connected the company is, as well as about its attitude to the sort of logistical challenges lesser outfits might dismiss as insuperable.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs0gsMSOh824WdFMKYMNFlGhWLqV_uIWgBENQ3P60ncs2nSfViBY8QUW51yRhxShojJlKOXYbm4Y5yab1FQvrg57vB-cv29S7vE4oHX_-vW0KnUGUlGraUU3kU2SWlSNk7rDg0LuUqbv4/s1600/IMG-2822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs0gsMSOh824WdFMKYMNFlGhWLqV_uIWgBENQ3P60ncs2nSfViBY8QUW51yRhxShojJlKOXYbm4Y5yab1FQvrg57vB-cv29S7vE4oHX_-vW0KnUGUlGraUU3kU2SWlSNk7rDg0LuUqbv4/s400/IMG-2822.jpg" width="300" /></a><br />
It also reflects the sheer pool of talent that can be called upon in the German capital, with those who turned up to play their part, however small, ranging from Deutsche Oper stalwarts to younger singers just starting out. Inevitably standards varied, both in terms of the voices the interpretations, and the event served to highlight in many ways what an exacting medium song is—some songs certainly were given something more akin to operatic treatment, for example.<br />
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One constant, though, was Jean-Paul Pruna’s alert piano playing, managing to create a sense of continuity as all around him changed. The whole performance also served as a challenge to those listeners and performers who tend to view song cycles—and this one in particular—as music drama <i>manqué</i>, allowing us to appreciate every song with fresh individuality.<br />
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Swedish baritone Joa Helgesson deserves special praise in the tricky opening spot for presenting a sensitive ‘Gute Nacht’, and likewise Jason Steigerwalt for wrapping things up with a movingly understated—and beautifully sung—‘Der Leiermann’.<br />
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In fact, excellent baritones seemed to dominate the evening (a fact that had not escaped the attention of the <a href="http://barihunks.blogspot.de/2017/12/eleven-baritones-to-perform-schuberts.html?spref=tw&m=1">Barihunks blog</a>). Allen Boxer was especially impressive in ‘Der Wegweiser’, and Markus Brück, last seen by me as <a href="http://hugoshirley.blogspot.de/2016/10/deutsche-opera-berlin-rigoletto.html">Rigoletto</a> at the Deutsche Oper, offered a consummate ‘Das Wirtshaus'. There were seriously impressive voices on display from, among others, Julian Arsenault (‘Frühlingstraum’), Marlon Da Silva Maia (‘Der greise Kopf’) and Seth Carico (‘Im Dorfe’), even if we occasionally could have done with a little more intimacy in approach.<br />
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Tenors were represented by two Deutsche Oper ensemble members: Robert Watson (who sings Cavaradossi there, no less, in February) unleashed an impressive ‘Stürmische Morgen’ and Matthew Newlin offered a beautifully controlled and concentrated ‘Wasserflut’.<br />
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There was a fine selection of mezzos and sopranos, too. The former included the rich-voiced trio of Sarah Ring (also the company’s Intendant) in ‘Irrlicht’, Laura Atkinson in ‘Einsamkeit’ and Sylvia Bronk in ‘Die Krähe’ (although her colourful outfit, I couldn’t help thinking, was more reminiscent of a bumble-bee). At the other end of the spectrum were the tidy sopranos of Joanna Foot (‘Rückblick’), Jana Miller (‘Täuschung’) and Marie-Audrey Schatz, whose focus and delicate vibrato brought out the best in the ‘wein, wein’s of ‘Letzte Hoffnung’.<br />
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I made special note, too, of Rachel Fenlon’s considered and refined account of ‘Der Lindenbaum’, Sally Drutman’s characterful ‘Mut!’ and Mary Osborne rich, determined ‘Die Nebensonnen’. But everyone—including some, I apologise, I haven’t mentioned—added to a unique and thought-provoking event.<br />
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A special word, too, for the venue, the remarkable Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi, on the Prenzlauer Berg/Pankow border in East Berlin. It’s a grand and evocative 1920s former cinema, with a modest stage contained within elegantly curved proscenium, and outstandingly clear and direct acoustics.<br />
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It was dusted off and reopened only in 2012 after more than half a century of, as its website poetically puts it, ‘Dornröschenschlaf’. But this event was part of a <a href="https://www.startnext.com/rettet-das-theater-im-delphi">fundraising effort</a> that was needed after the place was stripped of all its technical equipment (worth tens of thousands of euros) in a robbery earlier in the year. It played host to Puccini’s Toaster’s <i>La bohème</i> this time last year, too, and the company returns there for <i>La traviata</i> in April. Let’s hope it continues to thrive.<br />
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I’d also seen Puccini’s Toaster’s previous show in November, at a different venue a bit further round to the North West in Wedding: Tangoloft, Berlin. A joint venture with MOOD Opera of Detroit, it juxtaposed a staging of Gian Carlo Menotti’s bizarre (and not a little misogynistic) 1939 radio opera <i><b>The Old Maid and the Thief</b></i> against a relaxed second-half cabaret of songs by Eisler, Weill and contemporaries.<br />
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The venue’s airless acoustic took a little adjusting to, but Staunton did an excellent job of staging a work whose pacing is clearly designed for the different demands of radio opera—although admittedly I’m not entirely clear what those might be. A framing device helped both to tie the swift scenes together and slightly distance us from the piece’s less-than-flattering take on women, depicted as going weak at the knees (and in the head) at the arrival of a mysterious and handsome stranger (the excellent Reuben Walker, the deliverer also of a fine ‘Die Post’ in the <i>Winterreise</i>), mistakenly believed to be a dangerous thief.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Puccini's Toaster's The Old Maid and the Thief at the TangoLoft, Berlin, <br />
with (l. to. r) Reuben Walker (Bob), Danielle Wright (Miss Todd) and Sarah Ring (Laetitia)</td></tr>
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Philipp Lang and Brigitt Bayer were excellent as Mr and Mrs Pinkerton (the <i>Madame Butterfly</i> reference, if indeed there was one, was lost on me), and Ring was brilliantly scheming and seductive as Laetitia, the young maid who is instrumental leading the titular Old Maid, Miss Todd, astray. And in that role Danielle Wright was powerfully committed, her big mezzo used to fill out what became an increasingly rich and tragic character.<br />
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Rebecca Lang conducted a small chamber ensemble in her own ingenious reduction of the score, which would be good to have a chance to hear within a more sympathetic acoustic. She was also on hand as one of the accompanists (the other was Kunal Lahiry) who made the most of a rickety piano in the songs of the second half.<br />
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Finally, and going yet further back in time as well as heading south from the Tangoloft to the Acker Stadt Palast in Mitte, a few thoughts on Stephen Crowe’s <i style="font-weight: bold;">Francis Bacon Opera</i>, which I caught in late October. This had already been seen at the Tête à tête festival in London (the video below has extracts from that incarnation) and was being unleashed on unsuspecting Berliners here for the first time—the composer’s previous opera, <i>Pterodactyls of Ptexas</i>, was seen here last year, though alas not by me.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrZ1XQFzLnmfS2kAx-t1edmRxsezCyE-asuh5LaBOTAGYn6R4zQfopQxy244vRgozoUFgo-qtVIdTKeQuBWu-bhKwE52enqQZD4q0yGP0TWeaooiGi5dn-8x7dJoVE6UNLehqnykth7LM/s1600/Berlin+Bacon+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1028" data-original-width="1500" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrZ1XQFzLnmfS2kAx-t1edmRxsezCyE-asuh5LaBOTAGYn6R4zQfopQxy244vRgozoUFgo-qtVIdTKeQuBWu-bhKwE52enqQZD4q0yGP0TWeaooiGi5dn-8x7dJoVE6UNLehqnykth7LM/s400/Berlin+Bacon+8.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stephen Crowe's The Francis Bacon Opera at the Acker Stadtpalast</td></tr>
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This new work struck me as a little gem, though, with Crowe achieving remarkable results from limited resources: two tenors; a pianist on an old upright; a simple set consisting of cloths variously stripped away, hung up or laid down, with projections of skeletal versions of famous Bacon canvases.<br />
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The libretto, if that’s not too conventional a term, consists of a word-by-word transcript of Melvyn Bragg’s 1985 <i>South Bank Show</i> interview with Francis Bacon, which famously saw the pair get increasingly sozzled in a variety of locales.<br />
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The comedy is inherent, of course, and Crowe certainly doesn’t underplay this, demanding plenty of jazzy flourishes and outrageous Gerald Barry-esque distortion and elongation from his singers, accompanied by spidery tinkles, splashes and bashes on the piano. But there’s another important side to the work, too. The composer produces some music of disarming, unexpected delicacy and loveliness as he searches for the weird beauty of these encounters: of the burgeoning inebromance between Bacon and Bragg, of the strange revelations that come as befuddled questions stumble past woozy answers and logic and language start to sway on their axes.<br />
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The performances from Christopher Killerby (Bacon) and Oliver Brignall (Bragg) were terrific, and necessarily fearless and committed, right up to the final knocking back of mini bottles of spirits—they were handed out to the audience too, but I chickened out and left mine under my seat. Joseph Houston was heroic in the kaleidoscopic demands of the piano part, and Tone Aminda Gøytil Lund had done an ingenious job conjuring up so much from so little with her set and costume designs.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPGZCuaoZlA1LBIXJlIF1Phq_z0_AjG7E2vJ5Cs9dKjL06GJeVMfn-LAahr77ETMFRV4ycGZz_JcfZowCqddsFhyphenhyphenExQb2JeGioBOb3APc1noeknhFojq1BZhL3cHHHpsYqGdmDQV4M-s4/s1600/Berlin+Bacon+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="1500" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPGZCuaoZlA1LBIXJlIF1Phq_z0_AjG7E2vJ5Cs9dKjL06GJeVMfn-LAahr77ETMFRV4ycGZz_JcfZowCqddsFhyphenhyphenExQb2JeGioBOb3APc1noeknhFojq1BZhL3cHHHpsYqGdmDQV4M-s4/s640/Berlin+Bacon+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christopher Killerby (l, as Francis Bacon) and Oliver Brignall (Melvyn Bragg)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The piece itself was especially welcome for being ideally paced (at a short, sharp 50 minutes), and for avoiding the double pitfalls of pretentiousness and wilfully abstruse vocal writing—it was certainly demanding, but never, it seemed, simply for its own sake.<br />
<br />
It was an arresting, funny and engrossing show, but a beguiling and strangely affectionate one too.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i><a href="https://puccinistoaster.com/">Puccini’s Toaster</a> present </i>La traviata<i> at the Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi on 20 & 22 April 2018. </i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://stephencroweopera.org/about">Stephen Crowe</a>’s next project is a song cycle for mezzo and chorus based on the texts of Sappho. </i></li>
</ul>
<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-19742210805437768832017-12-14T14:08:00.000+00:002017-12-19T14:12:00.662+00:00Staatsoper Berlin: L'incoronazione di PoppeaStaatsoper unter den Linden, 13 December 2017<br />
<br />
The small matter of renovating its Unter den Linden home has meant that the Staatsoper in Berlin, by necessity, has come rather late to the Monteverdi anniversary party. Nevertheless, its new production of <i>L'incoronazione di Poppea</i> opened at the weekend hot on the heels of its new Hänsel und Gretel. By this third performance, it had moved on to its second scheduled Poppea in the shape of Roberta Mameli – Anna Prohaska had been the first.<br />
<br />
[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-poppea-cencic-mameli-sabata-fasolis-staatsoper-berlin-december-2017">Bachtrack</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-27056176241076234602017-12-10T14:06:00.000+00:002017-12-19T14:12:08.120+00:00Staatsoper Berlin: Hänsel und Gretel Staatsoper unter den Linden, 8 December 2017<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So staggered and diluted has the process of the Staatsoper’s reopening been that this first night of its new Hänsel und Gretel hardly felt like an event at all. The great and the good had been assembled for the previous evening’s 275th anniversary concert, but for the first operatic performance in reopened house – I’m inclined not to count the ill-advised and ill-executed staging of Schumann’s Faust-Szenen in October – a few balloons on the building’s scrubbed-up façade was about it... <br />
<br />
[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-hansel-gretel-freyer-weigle-dreisig-wundsam-staatsoper-berlin-december-2017">Bachtrack</a>]</div>
Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-68679277681392501892017-12-04T14:11:00.000+00:002017-12-19T14:14:32.131+00:00Berliner Philharmoniker/HaitinkMahler: Symphony No. 9<br />
<br />
Philharmonie, Berlin, 2 December 2017<br />
<br />
Mahler’s final completed symphony has been something of a favourite for recent music directors of the Berlin Philharmonic, although the orchestra clearly likes to ration its performances. Simon Rattle conducted the last one here six years ago, but with the conductor and orchestra having just returned from a long tour in the Far East – and having given a guest appearance last week at the newly sort-of reopened Staatsoper unter den Linden – the baton was passed to Bernard Haitink.<br />
<br />
[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-mahler-haitink-berlin-philharmonic-december-2017">Backtrack</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-30393139718691531142017-11-28T08:24:00.000+00:002017-12-20T08:24:30.024+00:00Deutsche Oper Berlin: Le prophète26 November 2017<br />
<br />
After David Alden took an abstract, stylised approach to his production of <i>Les Huguenots </i>at the Deutsche Oper last season, the French director Oliver Py’s take on Meyebeer’s next <i>grand opéra</i>, <i>Le prophète</i>, feels relatively straightforward. Admittedly he takes the action from 16th-century Germany – the prompt box was done up as a memorial stone to the historical figure the work was based on – and plonks it somewhere in the late 20th century.<br />
<br />
[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-meyerbeer-prophete-kunde-margaine-py-mazzola-deutsche-oper-berlin-november-2017">Bachtrack</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-7073249823461721262017-11-21T16:12:00.002+00:002017-11-21T16:13:28.727+00:00Staatsoper Hannover: Salome18 November 2017<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Richard Strauss was hesitating about composing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra </i>so soon after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salome</i>, Hugo von Hofmannsthal tried to
set his mind at rest. The two plays—the former by Hofmannsthal himself, of
course, the latter by Oscar Wilde—were completely different, he assured the composer in
one of the earliest letters of their correspondence. </div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Ixn2qauGEi6jhNLg6DEKBf7X4s2mQ3RlHH5vcEMsbk2-a-QOMo6fIwAVSx4-VCU67wbNnD4iizSg-n9zSQXjxwrsOQRownegT_ZaXFglecTkXGFAf1ESQj5jflbWgybe6Xqkh9P3f1c/s1600/1511019965_salome_gp_008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Ixn2qauGEi6jhNLg6DEKBf7X4s2mQ3RlHH5vcEMsbk2-a-QOMo6fIwAVSx4-VCU67wbNnD4iizSg-n9zSQXjxwrsOQRownegT_ZaXFglecTkXGFAf1ESQj5jflbWgybe6Xqkh9P3f1c/s640/1511019965_salome_gp_008.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annemarie Kramer as Salome in Hanover (Photo © Thomas M. Jauk)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘The blend of colour in
the two subjects strikes me as quite different in all essentials,</span>’ Hofmannsthal wrote<span style="font-size: 12pt;">: </span>‘<span style="font-size: 12pt;">in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Salome </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">much is so to speak purple and
violet, the atmosphere is torrid; in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Elektra</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">,
on the other hand, it is a mixture of night and light, or black and bright.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Admittedly, Hofmannsthal’s descriptions were not entirely
disinterested: he was determined that Strauss should move forward with his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra</i>. However, I was reminded of his
characterization of the composer’s 1905 shocker when watching Ingo Kerkhof’s
production—distilled, abstract, cool. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRuWi76W0aAFOktBOHd_xemWweDheDMvt4ieIyPGroohwfn6btbM7MKE0ABfI5c2Xabp9EPW3Q-9gvEfSCSv1b8ePou9Hj4R4O5kCAa9Y2yvmk3aWX144jsXLeZs_uqx_42YSDgiq3wLs/s1600/1511019849_salome_gp_160.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRuWi76W0aAFOktBOHd_xemWweDheDMvt4ieIyPGroohwfn6btbM7MKE0ABfI5c2Xabp9EPW3Q-9gvEfSCSv1b8ePou9Hj4R4O5kCAa9Y2yvmk3aWX144jsXLeZs_uqx_42YSDgiq3wLs/s640/1511019849_salome_gp_160.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annemarie Kramer (Salome) and Brian Davis (Jochanaan) (l.), with Simon Bode (Narraboth) (Photo © Thomas M. Jauk)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>Inge Medert’s costumes put the cast in regulation dishevelled smart-contemporary, our Salome in a simple linen dress. <span style="font-size: 12pt;">In the first scene, everyone apart from her sings from the front seats of the
</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Erster Rang</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, and characters keep popping up through other doors in the auditorium. Salome, appearing through a broad, slinky, smartly-lit metallic string curtain upstage, is the main
attraction, the subject of everyone’s gaze.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other main feature of Anne Neuser’s set is a wall
of dull gold that descends intermittently to focus the attention, and to
provide the background for some effective shadow play (lighting by Elana
Siberski). Kerkhof offers an unusual take on the dance (choreographed by
Mathias Brühlmann), in which the dinner guests stay on to don frocks and dance
around themselves, while a blindfolded Herod is tricked into touching them up. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3kqzcydz_y27ovurLV8N2aI01W9WMaDMlXcoEUZ6a6Ju5Zw8fbsdd_sY-KUQXEsa6O2N8kHbZmKVnDcedwnwoY-CyuQvvBYrqNrA5Vl-u5YDQM-jb3OMfCbdf90If4vY7YSjVTlCmq-U/s1600/1511018592_salome_ohp_390.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3kqzcydz_y27ovurLV8N2aI01W9WMaDMlXcoEUZ6a6Ju5Zw8fbsdd_sY-KUQXEsa6O2N8kHbZmKVnDcedwnwoY-CyuQvvBYrqNrA5Vl-u5YDQM-jb3OMfCbdf90If4vY7YSjVTlCmq-U/s640/1511018592_salome_ohp_390.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Künzli (Herod), with dancers (Photo © Thomas M. Jauk)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">There’s some gore when Narraboth slashes his forearms to bloody effect, and
kudos to the prop department for an impressive severed head, delivered
wrapped in a cloth. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That’s about it, though. Jochanaan (the impressively
resonant and imposing Brian Davis) has no cistern to sing from, his voice
emanating from somewhere on high. There’s no sense of time or place. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3gGv_xSMkM4EWpwmjrJ0m3wj1ZFPVUfz_3lT9OIKizFb_BAklSxKB_YMnpOU-m8WcCCBRQBZR2VlMJ0tZtnS8r3k5NlXasqUP1umheauSIrKrK21JovxYG2cy6h5eR9W3shx2jWeyRpA/s1600/1511018565_salome_ohp_630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1065" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3gGv_xSMkM4EWpwmjrJ0m3wj1ZFPVUfz_3lT9OIKizFb_BAklSxKB_YMnpOU-m8WcCCBRQBZR2VlMJ0tZtnS8r3k5NlXasqUP1umheauSIrKrK21JovxYG2cy6h5eR9W3shx2jWeyRpA/s400/1511018565_salome_ohp_630.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annemarie Kramer (Salome) <br />
(photo © Thomas M. Jauk)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">There’s little to be actively offended about in the production, but nor does it
add anything. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Or, in fact, it's worse than that, for the lack of any context precludes any sense
of that torrid atmosphere Hofmannsthal described, or much sense of who the characters are. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Strauss’s score calls out
to be amplified by something more, in terms of staging, than we had here. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I found myself neither moved or shocked by
Salome’s final scene—and ideally one should, I think, be both. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Matters perhaps
weren’t helped by the fact that Ivan Repušić’s conducting, though certainly not
without its powerful eruptions, charted a sensible, level-headed course. Highly musical and distinguished by impressive clarity of texture (and on the whole very well played by the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover), it didn't offer anything extra to make up for the lack of anything on stage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">That's hardly the conductor's fault, though, and one can’t really fault the cast, either. Annemarie
Kremer’s Salome, though occasionally failing to project sufficiently in her
lower range, stayed the course admirably and acted with intensity: her scenes
with Davis’s unusually suggestible Jochanaan, alternating disgust with a kind
of desperate, intertwining intimacy, were a highlight. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">There was much to enjoy in Robert Künzli’s jittery
Herod and Kathuna Mikaberidze's imperious, youthful Herodias. Among the smaller roles the young bass Daniel
Eggert stood out as the First Nazerene. Simon Bode might have made more of Narraboth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ultimately, though, this <i>Salome</i>'s lack of potency was down to the director. No one in the cast or in the
pit could do much to bring colour and atmosphere to his underwhelming
staging. <o:p></o:p></div>
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</style>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-4826249645138096552017-11-09T16:22:00.001+00:002017-11-09T16:22:49.243+00:00Semperoper Dresden: Die Entführung aus dem Serail2 November 2017<div>
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We got a little more than we bargained for with this <i>Die Entführung aus dem Serail</i>, as became
clear with a pre-performance announcement. The billed Konstanze, Hulkar
Sabirova, had been taken ill, and was being replaced Gloria Rehm, who’d just
about had time to be run through the production. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6dDZh5UIy556XFX09iMFSofXMlNArHv1HDKlDe3WMgSweuKrC6DdY5NTHYgTUTk1xaR4FDqbYcO8doNPg085oqtNRbdFKrpSAIatY31O-EZckVdaXL50vszeZp7xhV0s7SPEPrxyPbN4/s1600/EntfSerail_OHP_FotoJQuast_152.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6dDZh5UIy556XFX09iMFSofXMlNArHv1HDKlDe3WMgSweuKrC6DdY5NTHYgTUTk1xaR4FDqbYcO8doNPg085oqtNRbdFKrpSAIatY31O-EZckVdaXL50vszeZp7xhV0s7SPEPrxyPbN4/s640/EntfSerail_OHP_FotoJQuast_152.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Semperoper (Photo © Jochen Quast)</td></tr>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuMAQ37v3AYeauL1hSpufBFYxYuPGdpYfqfUMX33HpPUTUPOslwnIiRSPOZu9NswvBMQ5_5-X5axwp_Ag3M8Jfz8vX0ESrDRwLFtp-DRVekQezTZs7xYXtAJDcM7Uja07lS4XvIuHtlc/s1600/IMG-2730.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1006" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuMAQ37v3AYeauL1hSpufBFYxYuPGdpYfqfUMX33HpPUTUPOslwnIiRSPOZu9NswvBMQ5_5-X5axwp_Ag3M8Jfz8vX0ESrDRwLFtp-DRVekQezTZs7xYXtAJDcM7Uja07lS4XvIuHtlc/s320/IMG-2730.jpg" width="201" /></a>Rather more last–minute was the cancellation of the Osmin,
Michael Eder. A replacement had been found in the shape of <span lang="EN-US">Mischa Schelomianski</span>, but he’d barely
had time to be fitted into his costume. He ended up having to go through the show
with the help of a newly rustled-up sidekick, played by an assistant director, who
steered him around, occasionally handing him a script, often, given some witty
improvisation in character, to unexpectedly amusing effect. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Inevitably this made for some difficulty in judging the
general direction of the characters in Michiel Dijkema’s new-ish production
(one of last seasons premieres). But it did nothing to hide the fact that this is
an appealing, imaginative and witty show, designed (by Dijkema) with tongue
firmly in cheek and on a grandly pantomimic scale. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjabAhEcTTeDVq3Zr-gN0gVfVdmPhUIuPsGEWYuGa2cBDJNgRPDagvzwoj5f53HHURQq-FmvWEw0ws6uiZpfNn_443jAaeMF0dJ41AvScMiK3e192XhsWRgTNLXWgXCQtXrXSmB1a7eYIw/s1600/IMG-2731+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1029" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjabAhEcTTeDVq3Zr-gN0gVfVdmPhUIuPsGEWYuGa2cBDJNgRPDagvzwoj5f53HHURQq-FmvWEw0ws6uiZpfNn_443jAaeMF0dJ41AvScMiK3e192XhsWRgTNLXWgXCQtXrXSmB1a7eYIw/s320/IMG-2731+%25281%2529.jpg" width="205" /></a>Much of it felt as much like <i>Die Zauberflöte </i>as <i>Entführung</i>, highlighting some interesting parallels between the rulers that feature in each. Here we had a mysterious
eastern landscape of moveable mini-islands covered in reeds and rather
triste-looking trees; a wrought gate and a chunk of fortress (also moveable); threatening
clouds glowering behind; dialogue distantly accompanied by an ominous
background hum and rumble. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Costumes were bright and exaggerated, as were the props: a
vast birdcage on wheels to house Pasha Selim’s harem; an array of large
instruments of torture—‘Martern aller Arten’ indeed—rising from some fiery
upstage depths to the sound of threatening chants. Fans of the Castorf <i>Ring </i>will be pleased to know that the
production even includes a crocodile. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s bright, engaging and entertaining, then, and
while it might not constitute a profound meditation on the issues raised by
Mozart’s work—more pertinent today than ever, surely—it certainly doesn’t
trivialise them either. And, above all, Dijkema shows himself to be musically
sensitive, leaving the musical numbers to speak for themselves, as they did
with real eloquence here. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Forming the foundation of the basis performance was beautifully urbane
playing from the Staatskapelle: stylish, beautifully shaped and with an easy
grace that was helped by Christopher Moulds’s easy–going, non–interventionist
approach on the podium. The results were a joy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vWAf_o-5tl-AorZqLl2rI7EzdVj-ri4pIYEPJmEjn_xNDedR2oZQ1JSSIL3jTSKapN3y20tXazhhaQH0j_9o7Z9XLvBq4S04WdC4KYiP4lrfmyLukPI8EoX3jqHncpbCq2g1wKXoyys/s1600/EntfSerail_OHP_FotoJQuast_284.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vWAf_o-5tl-AorZqLl2rI7EzdVj-ri4pIYEPJmEjn_xNDedR2oZQ1JSSIL3jTSKapN3y20tXazhhaQH0j_9o7Z9XLvBq4S04WdC4KYiP4lrfmyLukPI8EoX3jqHncpbCq2g1wKXoyys/s640/EntfSerail_OHP_FotoJQuast_284.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Semperoper (Photo © Jochen Quast)</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was some fine singing from the cast too, with Norman
Rheinhardt bringing plenty of grace and clean tone to Belmonte, even if the
voice did occasionally cloud over a little. I wasn’t that keen on the artful pianissimo he employed on a couple of
occasions, either, but this was nevertheless a satisfying, aristocratic and
stylish performance. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rehm’s soprano is a wonderfully bright, luminous one and she
sang Konstanze with great allure, and even managed in the rushed circumstances to create a good rapport with Jaron Löwenberg’s charistmatic Pasha Selim. Aaron Pegram and Sibylla Duffe made a lively,
engaging pair as Pedrillo and Blonde. And was it me or did Duffe—during
her first scene, played out on some sort of giant turnip plantation— interpolate a ‘Brexit’ under her breath between ‘Ich bin eine Engländerin’ and
‘zur Freiheit geboren’? </div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-13541939328613933302017-11-07T13:53:00.000+00:002017-11-07T13:53:16.646+00:00Semperoper Dresden: Götterdämmerung1 November 2017<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Christian Thielemann conducts two complete <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ring </i>cycles in Dresden early next year,
but I’ve been experiencing the tetralogy at a slow pace as he’s been building
it up over the past 21 months or so: he began with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walküre </i>early last year and followed it up with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rheingold </i>a year ago and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Siegfried</i> in January. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde), Andreas Schager (Siegfried) (Photo © Klaus Gigga)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5RgBmSzsqxWSXNo2Ks1lfXPsTmTRpiYxyvluX8RyhdiFKzjy3XFe41hcGL6-wYzwQs7ZDxMpyU7z8rJLa0sKUL0TZtmkhYuMcL0B_Mw6tFKn_OBprd6J6S0xP_TKNllMb_gkEjQbOSg/s1600/IMG-2723.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1027" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5RgBmSzsqxWSXNo2Ks1lfXPsTmTRpiYxyvluX8RyhdiFKzjy3XFe41hcGL6-wYzwQs7ZDxMpyU7z8rJLa0sKUL0TZtmkhYuMcL0B_Mw6tFKn_OBprd6J6S0xP_TKNllMb_gkEjQbOSg/s320/IMG-2723.JPG" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Such an arrangement doesn’t help for overall appreciation of
Willy Decker’s production (first seen here in the early 2000s), but it struck me as being at its very best in this
final instalment: uncluttered, understated and often deeply moving. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Indeed,
dramatically speaking, I think this was the most moving performance of this
grandest of grand finales that I’ve seen, to a large extent because of the
detailed characterisation as revived here—no revival director was credited as
such, but Alexander Brendel and Bernd Gierke were on the bill for </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Abendspielleitung</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> and </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Regieassistenz</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> respectively—matched by
terrific acting from about as good a cast as one could expect to see in the
piece these days.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nina Stemme’s now familiar Brünnhilde retained a powerful
sense of nobility throughout, and she still sings with astonishing power and
commitment, even if the voice seemed to take a little while to crank up to full power. <br /><br />Iain Paterson’s Gunther was outstanding, impeccably sung and
charting a detailed trajectory louche lack of concern to a painful realisation
of what he was becoming part of. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ0sqzuhjz8ZY6Rp-aC0rAySRtjtbd54OuFO9Ua5TU9O7i_5KRcaGIS_RfoX1y0UaZMP6URpRP8IMaGpX64Y8UFvlzmFItAZXkcQGvnYSS2JPVOVrmjLZiX5Xs34VJQ4ttk2COfXWa3I/s1600/IMG-2724.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1160" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ0sqzuhjz8ZY6Rp-aC0rAySRtjtbd54OuFO9Ua5TU9O7i_5KRcaGIS_RfoX1y0UaZMP6URpRP8IMaGpX64Y8UFvlzmFItAZXkcQGvnYSS2JPVOVrmjLZiX5Xs34VJQ4ttk2COfXWa3I/s320/IMG-2724.jpg" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Falk Struckmann remains a bass-baritone rather
than a true bass, but his complex timbre—an oily maelstrom of blacks and greys—made
for a properly threatening and commanding Hagen. Edith Haller’s vulnerable,
desperate Gutrune added to a fully convincing picture, as did Christa Mayer’s
moving, impassioned Waltraute.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Andreas Schager had some moments of strain as Siegfried—only
the truly superhuman don't—but rang out heroically, creating a believable
figure quick to be seduced, desperate to join in with Hagen and Gunther as if
starved of some good old laddish high jinks. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Helped by the clear-minded economy
of the production—the stage emptied as a weary, heartbroken Wotan slowly walked
on to observe—Schager delivered a death scene shocking power, underlined by
conducting of almost suffocating dramatic weight from Thielemann.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Iain Paterson (Gunther), Andreas Schager (Siegfried), Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde) (Photo © Klaus Gigga)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />The conductor’s approach to this score, as before, is
grandly expansive, always rooted deep in some primeval harmonic soil, often
daringly drawn out and often also, it has to be said, rather pear-shaped: the
lower brass are allowed to create a bulbousness in the overall sound that, as
in the final minutes of the Immolation Scene, engulfs all else. Elsewhere,
particularly in Act 2, the singers struggled to be heard against an orchestral
backdrop that the conductor seemed unwilling to pare down. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sabrina Kögel (Wellgunde) (Photo © Klaus Gigga)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">But it’s a small price to pay for a musical vision that is
so coherent and imposing, which attempts, it seems, at every turn to convey the
sheer vastness of Wagner’s own conception. And the playing of Staatskapelle
was, on the whole, magnificent, offering a sound of rounded refinement and
silky virtuosity.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A final word for Decker’s production and Wolfgang Dussmann’s
designs. In the previous instalments we’d had the idea of the tetralogy being
staged by Wotan himself, variously performed and observed by the cycle’s
characters. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It had occasionally felt a little fussy. <span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">Here, though, it came
together as vision of remarkably refreshing clarity and poetic beauty: an
object lesson in economy and musical sensitivity that reached a highpoint at
the very end. Wellgunde slowly rolled on a new virgin sphere</span>—a sphericus rasus?—<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">as the
cast-audience of the previous drama sank down behind a white frame. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">She stood
there still, turning towards us only as, after a daringly drawn-out pause, Thielemann
let the final redemptive bars sing out. It was a stunning moment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-55202850754775449622017-10-25T10:56:00.000+01:002017-10-26T09:32:41.819+01:00Staatsoper Hannover: Der junge Lord; Der fliegende Holländer<div class="MsoNormal">
19 October; 20 October<br />
<br />
The Staatsoper<span style="font-variant: small-caps;"> </span>in
Hannover has, over the past few seasons, presented several of Hans Werner
Henze’s stage works. Last season it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die
Englische Katze</i>; this season it’s another opera with an English element, his
sharp comedy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Der Junge Lord</i>, premiered
up the road at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper in 1965 and set to a clear-sighted
and quick-witted libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann—based on a parable taken from an
1827 collection of stories by Wilhlem Hauff.<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA4hEC0-lEemh3IbZHRwnYRcNDnK10LtoBIL5c-m2BqAVoGG18OqmTLNodvrvwU_O0ethHqZIN1acD5_-yI_L8yDvvjPcZqejdcUxehOkOyNbFiSdEgeQQXBj4Nd8DON1wtdnNLO51Aog/s1600/Der+junge+Lord_015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA4hEC0-lEemh3IbZHRwnYRcNDnK10LtoBIL5c-m2BqAVoGG18OqmTLNodvrvwU_O0ethHqZIN1acD5_-yI_L8yDvvjPcZqejdcUxehOkOyNbFiSdEgeQQXBj4Nd8DON1wtdnNLO51Aog/s640/Der+junge+Lord_015.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henze's <i>Der junge Lord </i>at the Staatsoper Hannover (Photo © Jörg Landsberg)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: center;">In brief: an </span>English nobleman, Sir Edgar, wows then increasingly insults the inhabitants of the small German town of Hülsdorf-Gotha, before presenting them with
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘</span>nephew<span style="font-size: 12pt;">’,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Lord Barrat. This young lord impresses them with his refreshingly direct and unorthodox manners, even setting the local beauty</span>’<span style="font-size: 12pt;">s heart a-flutter, before, as his behaviour gets increasingly wild, being exposed as an ape Sir Edgar has procured from a visiting circus. As a tale of hypocrisy, suggestibility and gullibility, it is surely as relevant as ever. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">click to enlarge</td></tr>
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Half a century on, Henze’s score retains remarkable sense of freshness, at
least as conducted here by Mark Rohde, whose incisive work was matched by
precision and virtuosity by the orchestra. Ostensibly inspired primarily by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bel canto</i>—and benefitting from that
genre’s clarity of texture as well as some relatively grateful vocal writing—it’s a work that throws in a variety of other
influences, too, all bound together expertly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
The director here, Bernd Mottl, offers up a staging that is every
bit as sharp. <span style="text-align: center;">Hülsdorf-Gotha </span>and its inhabitants are in stylised,
exaggerated black and white (costumes by Alfred Mayerhofer). In Friedrich
Eggert’s designs, the stage floor is chequered squares, the action contained
and variously focused within a series of black, frilly-edged panels.<br />
<br />
Colour is
reserved for the English interlopers, led by the threateningly mute Sir Edgar,
here given real menace by Franz Mazura. The contrast is further underlined
through the uptight, preening manner of the Hülsdorf-Gotha residents and the
louche way of the visitors, epitomised of course by the young lord Barrat himself,
played here as rubber-limbed, gold lamé-suited Michael Jackson, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">c. </i>1985.</div>
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Hannover’s large ensemble cast was impressive, with
outstanding performances in particular from Stefan Adam, focused and
authoritative as Sir Edgar’s Secretary, and Sung-Keun Park, fearless both
physically and vocally as Lord Barrat. Rebecca Davis unveiled plenty of secure,
beautiful tone as Luise and Simon Bode sang mellifluously as her (moderately
interesting) initial love interest. Tichina Vaughn gave her all as the Jamaican cook Begonia—a broad caricature that perhaps dates the work more than any other
element.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Franz Mazura (Lord Edgar), Sung-Keun Park (Lord Baratt), Rebecca Davis (Luise) in <i>Der junge Lord </i>(Photo © Jörg Landsberg)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Romantic subplot arguably adds little to the drama, too, though it does offer Henze the opportunity for some seductive harp and celesta writing (a subconscious nod to</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Der Rosenkavalier</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">?</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">). But Luisa’s aria, the only freestanding number of the work, is less memorable than it should be</span>—hovering uncertainly between sincerity and irony.<br />
<br />
The piece’s undeniable freshness and wit also has to be
pitted against the sense one has that it’s just a little bit longer than it needs to be, the
premise that little bit too slight for its two hour-long acts. <span style="font-size: 12pt;">Nevertheless, given a staging as witty and sharp as this, one is in no doubt as
to <i>Der junge Lord</i></span>’s<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> theatrical viability and, one hopes, continued longevity.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Der fliegende Holländer </i>at Staatsoper Hannover (Photo © Thomas M. Jauk) </td></tr>
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One would never have guessed that Hannover’s current
production of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Der fliegende Holländer</i>,
new last season, had come from the same director. A ruined
shopping mall is not a natural choice as setting for the work, to put it mildly, and Mottl’s
production never really managed to persuade me that it was a good choice, either—or
to offer any reason why the Dutchman should have ended up there.<br />
<br />
The Spinning Chorus became a jolly
routine for a female chorus kitted out in fur coats, blond wigs and sunglasses,
with Senta, it seemed, a goth rebelling against commercialism and occasionally seeking solace in the piles of dirt
that surrounded the set.<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">click to enlarge</td></tr>
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Mareike Moor’s Mary is kitted out in something like simple
19th-century garb; the Dutchman wears black leather; Erik, dressed in some sort
of camouflage with crop-sprayer’s backpack, seems to work in pest control. The
Steuermann (a clean-toned Edward Mout), sings his early song to a mannequin. Senta joins the object of her obsession at the close in a fire that gets
ignited during the big Act 3 party—turned into a big nautical-themed song-and-dance<span style="font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in the shopping centre’s lower level.</span></div>
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Happily, at least the musical performance was on a very
high level. Ivan Repušić conducted an account of Wagner’s score that felt all
the more powerful for being a little reined-in and controlled. Gale force was unleashed only at key moments, and the work’s sheer musical craftsmanship was underlined throughout. The playing of the orchestra was very fine, too, mixing
impressive clarity with dramatic punch. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Krszysztof Szumanski stepped in as a late replacement as the
Dutchmann, singing with a pleasingly relaxed, expansive timbre, and with none of
the hectoring that one often hears in the role. Kelly God made a terrific
Senta, utterly secure and excitingly fearless, and Shavelg Armasi, though
vocally on the smaller end of the spectrum, brought plenty of character to her
father, who might or might not have been the owner of the mall itself. A special mention should be made, too, of Robert Künzli who, though
announced as indisposed, still sang Erik with a reliability that can’t always be taken for granted in this tricky role. <o:p></o:p></div>
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</style>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-17155058977038688332017-10-20T11:25:00.001+01:002017-10-26T10:16:38.248+01:00Theater an der Wien: Wozzeck<div class="MsoNormal">
17 October 2017<br />
<br />
When asked what the essence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wozzeck </i>is in his booklet interview, Robert Carsen answers that ‘It presents a great hopelessness.’ His view of the work, as presented in his new
production for the Theater an der Wien, is unremittingly bleak then, made all the
more so for its military minimalist <span style="font-size: 12pt;">aesthetic.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florian Boesch as Wozzeck at the Theater an der Wien (Photo © Werner Kmetitsch)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gideon Davey’s set consists of three camouflage walls
encompassing the stage, those on either side with multiple high openings. Wires
slung between them allow for sheets of material—also camouflage—to be
efficiently pulled across to delineate the space and cover up changes of the
largely minimal scenery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC5siSYyhllo0wmf_cq8qs8o2l5Sx5x56_8WAiFfq3kztrwalGYzeJj623CZc2IE9zaAKT2M1AfOUaa59X12aDVSu98AOznxJGkKHQOGlrGUIhK0AmU00kIj9joWsOi7pA0Y7564zsf5Q/s1600/IMG-2655.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1021" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC5siSYyhllo0wmf_cq8qs8o2l5Sx5x56_8WAiFfq3kztrwalGYzeJj623CZc2IE9zaAKT2M1AfOUaa59X12aDVSu98AOznxJGkKHQOGlrGUIhK0AmU00kIj9joWsOi7pA0Y7564zsf5Q/s320/IMG-2655.JPG" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
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When the space is opened up, we get the sense (amplified by
the characteristically atmospheric lighting by Carsen and Peter van Praet) of exaggerated perspective, especially
effective as we watch Wozzeck drown in the blue-green distance. As you’d expect
from Carsen, it’s a production that has a few moments of such poetry, of simple
means creating powerful effects. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Berg’s opera and his version of Büchner’s brilliantly
drawn characters don’t always benefit, it seems to me, from the conceptual open
spaces of this particular aesthetic. The costumes see women and even children, as well
as the men, kitted out in military garb: here is a uniform world without
contrasts; we could be anywhere in time or place in the last half century. </div>
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<br /></div>
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There’s no flinching in the portrayal of this rogue’s gallery: the Captain (a sturdy, forthright John Daszak) is relentlessly
hectoring, the Doctor (an impressive Stefan Cerny) relentlessly cruel, the Tambourmajor (Aleš
Briscein, less heroic than many in the role) charmless and unremittingly sadistic. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The misery of Lise Lindstrom’s strongly and often beautifully sung Marie is
complete—and requires the occasional alleviation through drugs—and one gets
little sense of any joy whatsoever derived from her child, portrayed with a
heartbreaking sense of isolation at this performance by Samuel Wegleitner. The
only hint of respite in this world of misery comes in Benjamin Hulett’s
relatively breezy Andres. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4u043L8Gq-i0LWHrtoVA7XeJS1SnxAupIEbKlphiGXRQUsjmkLSTFC4E8FU5mp59cGHWtIl1KVgEtnOiZ-RmQ2tuwoIangB4wAaaOrgRrFLKKO7MgE9ul5tPb73sOPdEu8oPWJSNNko/s1600/Wozzeck+2_%25C2%25A9+Werner+Kmetitsch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1132" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4u043L8Gq-i0LWHrtoVA7XeJS1SnxAupIEbKlphiGXRQUsjmkLSTFC4E8FU5mp59cGHWtIl1KVgEtnOiZ-RmQ2tuwoIangB4wAaaOrgRrFLKKO7MgE9ul5tPb73sOPdEu8oPWJSNNko/s400/Wozzeck+2_%25C2%25A9+Werner+Kmetitsch.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lise Lindstrom as Marie (© Werner Kmetitsch)</td></tr>
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At the heart of it all is an impressive Wozzeck from
Florian Boesch, who, as we know from his Lieder-singing, is never afraid to put expressionistic directness first; vocal beauty—and this is not a voice of
honeyed tones and rich colours in any case—is subordinated to dramatic truth.
Unlike with his Lieder-singing, though, here he seemed to have been encouraged to
draw from just one side of his broad expressive palette. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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There were a handful of moments of hushed intimacy,
admittedly, but a predominance of raw, visceral roar. This was Wozzeck as beefy brute,
his animalistic qualities further emphasised at the start of his scene with the
Doctor: he sits downstage with his back to us blithely producing a stool
sample, wiping his bare backside before delivering his offering for inspection. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As a demonstration of the character’s humiliation and loss of dignity it was undeniably
effective. And I won’t forget in a hurry the moment, at the height of Wozzeck’s paranoia,<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> that Boesch made his way to
the front of the stage to eyeball us and unleash the full power of his voice. But
reducing the character to an animal risked reducing us in the audience to </span>viewers of some sort of nature documentary rather than <span style="font-size: 12pt;">spectators of a drama—and a deeply human one at that.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aleš Briscien (Tambourmajor) and Florian Boesch (Wozzeck) (Photo © Werner Kmetitsch)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Wozzeck’s murder of Marie, conveyed with unblinking
directness, was shocking; but neither that nor his final stumble through a
field of bodies (dead, one presumed, but it wasn’t entirely clear) moved me on
an emotional level. The child’s forlorn ‘Hopp, hopp’ at the close, a rifle repurposed
as hobbyhorse, was also less touching than it can be in stagings that cover more of the spectrum between the human and the animal. In focusing powerfully on
the dehumanising effects of military life, Carsen was making an important point; but he also, it seemed to me, lost some of the work’s richness, blunting its tragedy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">Arguably the work’s richness was also what was primarily
lost in the orchestral performance, with Leo Hussain conducting a new version of
the score by Eberhard Kloke—largely a matter of compression of the instrumentation
so that the Wiener Symphoniker could be squeezed into the Theater an der Wien’s
modest pit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">Sinewy and raw, conducted with a powerful sense of focus, it nevertheless </span><span style="text-align: center;">complemented Carsen’s forceful vision well</span><span style="text-align: center;">—</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">a vision given yet greater force by</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"> fearlessly committed performances from the </span><span style="text-align: center;">Arnold Schoenberg Choir and the well-drilled </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">cast.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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</style>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-52326385118281078832017-10-13T10:47:00.000+01:002017-10-20T10:48:08.134+01:00Berliner Philharmoniker: The Cunning Little VixenPhilharmonie, Berlin, 12 October 2017<br />
<br />
Simon Rattle has over recent years established himself as something like the Staatsoper’s resident Janáček conductor here in Berlin, having been at the helm of performances of both <i>From the House of the Dead</i> and <i>Kátya Kabanová </i>during that company’s stint at the Schillertheater. Here, though, was a chance to hear him put his own orchestra – or one of them, at least – through its paces with the work that is generally agreed to have put the Czech composer on the map in Germany.<br />
<br />
[read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-janacek-vixen-rattle-sellars-finley-crowe-berlin-philharmonic-october-2017">Bachtrack</a>]<br />
<br />
<br />Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-45827870263640258052017-10-06T14:57:00.001+01:002017-10-06T16:28:48.367+01:00Staatsoper Berlin: 'Zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch!' – Szenen aus Goethes Faust3 October 2017<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXld2HtLnpJuZuTMhaPHcO_K7jrr2x_giVAFDj5tEPk7IWeCzsShx6mFoAxOMoxEe7sNX8jPqixJQcIy16VBmpN0YpnazGfFid4z_RS7-mQGI5TG4H88My4NEqPdn0Xej_wlSRAtGpF1w/s1600/IMG-2536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXld2HtLnpJuZuTMhaPHcO_K7jrr2x_giVAFDj5tEPk7IWeCzsShx6mFoAxOMoxEe7sNX8jPqixJQcIy16VBmpN0YpnazGfFid4z_RS7-mQGI5TG4H88My4NEqPdn0Xej_wlSRAtGpF1w/s640/IMG-2536.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Staatsoper unter den Linden on the night of its reopening</td></tr>
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<br /></div>
<div>
So, finally... seven years and over €400m later, the Staatsoper unter den Linden has reopened. At least temporarily – it closes again for a couple of months after this week’s celebrations before the season kicks off again for good in December.<br />
<br />
These reopening celebrations were supposed to have centred around a new Saul by Wolfgang Rihm, cancelled when the composer fell seriously ill. After scouting around for an alternative Intendant Jürgen Flimm plumped for Schumann’s Faust-Szenen, bolstered by segments of Goethe’s play...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
[read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-schumann-faust-flimm-barenboim-staatsoper-unter-den-linden-october-2017">Bachtrack</a>]</div>
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-85583236964859166952017-10-06T14:33:00.001+01:002017-10-06T14:44:04.573+01:00Staatsoper Hamburg: Der Freischütz 1 October 2017<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
There has been something of a flurry of new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Freischütz </i>stagings in my adopted corner
of Germany over the last few years, with recent new productions in Berlin,
Dresden and Leipzig. Of these I only saw the latter, earlier this year, but I can
now add the 1999 Hamburg staging by Leipzig’s former Intendant, Peter
Konwitschny, to the list—<span style="font-size: 12pt;">a list whose UK section includes only concert performances. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hlqNsjJsnaNq9XVzzG2wBdPghjRprWocyDPWcCASFkfciq-oKebsDbTeuUwGc4XDQUgtFHwP7AXkSgvBCzfReOORgo-4qGWDgKmKUysxh6TDUfk3UF1B3sSj56ocfMpFAqungO4NjJo/s1600/stueck-71-original.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hlqNsjJsnaNq9XVzzG2wBdPghjRprWocyDPWcCASFkfciq-oKebsDbTeuUwGc4XDQUgtFHwP7AXkSgvBCzfReOORgo-4qGWDgKmKUysxh6TDUfk3UF1B3sSj56ocfMpFAqungO4NjJo/s640/stueck-71-original.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(l. to r.) Ännchen. Agathe and viola-playing Samiel in Peter Konwitschny's Hamburg <i>Freischütz </i>(Photo © Jörn Kipping)</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Now something of a classic (the next performance after the
matinée I attended was the 50th in the house), Konwitschny’s staging is getting now getting its final run at this address. I’m very glad to have seen it, for it’s a
characteristically intelligent, questing and mischievous, iconoclastic affair. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Max’s insecurities are the basis of the whole plot, but are
too easily explained away as acceptable in traditional world of
thrusting horn-calls and the casual killing of innocent beasts. Not here,
though, where the production, at least as seen on this revival, exposes and
almost mocks his weakness. He is unsure and jittery throughout, memorably harangued
by a confrontational group of motley stage musicians in the opening scene; too easily
led astray; more than ever, one feels, undeserving of his last-minute reprieve.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWj9UiKCzXcXIVoBLxqoAw82wAJ8dXrTZcRBN3c95Iz-neWNtqVQW_6abN3p_RtE0Y0H8xOXNJUXFox4ivrXmzWa2Nq29kh0uW4p7fZU5JqAdetxENxh7EG0yrMuD6Nj-vgXtSNAq0akk/s1600/IMG-2542.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1136" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWj9UiKCzXcXIVoBLxqoAw82wAJ8dXrTZcRBN3c95Iz-neWNtqVQW_6abN3p_RtE0Y0H8xOXNJUXFox4ivrXmzWa2Nq29kh0uW4p7fZU5JqAdetxENxh7EG0yrMuD6Nj-vgXtSNAq0akk/s400/IMG-2542.jpg" width="283" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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The focus, emotional and dramatic, is put squarely onto
Agathe, played serenely here by the terrific Iulia Maria Dan, and sung in a
voice that offers exciting hints of the dramatic through its velvety lyric surface—this
member of the Hamburg ensemble is definitely a name to watch. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The character seems better than the situation she finds
herself in, not least because Konwitschny, in a characteristic fourth
wall-breaking touch, reveals the Hermit (a resonant Tigran Martirossian) as a
suave audience member watching her, with a mixture of paternal concern and
infatuation, from the front row of the stalls. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The opera itself, in as much as
it exists here as a self-contained work, is shown as coming to a close before
the Hermit’s final intervention, at which point a puzzled stage manager tries to work
out what’s going on before all the cast and chorus come back onto the stage for
a celebratory glass of bubbly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The primary feature of Gabriele Koerbl’s set is a elevator door,
stage right, the indicator lights above which hint at mysterious ascents and
descents, including, for the Wolf’s Glen, to the realm of Samiel. (S)he is represented
in that scene by a suave Otto Katzameier, but turns up as a slinky viola-playing
she-devil (Naomi Seiler) in Ännchen’s ‘Einst träumte meine sel’gen Base’—a
touch that was strangely reminiscent of the violin-playing ‘angel’ at the close
of Christoph Marthaler’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://hugoshirley.blogspot.de/2017/03/staatsoper-hamburg-lulu.html">Lulu</a> </i>here
earlier in the year. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Katharina Konradi’s sparky, mischievous Ännchen was
excellent here as throughout, and the four Bridesmaid’s deserve a special
mention, too, each minutely characterised as they presented their song as a
nervous series of individual performances. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gi99322_Qz0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gi99322_Qz0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Wolf's Glen scene is itself brilliantly realised, too, Samiel’s
voice resonating through speakers as Caspar manufactures the magic bullets above a television, with moral support from malfunctioning mechanical owl. Whether deliberately or not, the scene
also became reminiscent of Mime cooking up his broth for Siegfried, as
seen at least <span style="font-size: 12pt;">in many recent stagings, meaning that I heard forest murmurings in Weber’s
score that I’d not really noticed before. Malfunctioning, sinister technology is
present throughout, even in the interval, where the theatre's foyers
are filled with the continued eerie tick tock that brings the second act to a disquieting conclusion.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
As a repertoire revival there were some rough edges musically here and there, but conductor Christof Prick paced the performance well. Burkhard Fritz seemed to be having a bit of an off day as Max, too, but his underpowered vocal performance was arguably of a piece with Konwitschny’s characterisation of the role—a characterisation that, along with its corollary in the elevation of Agathe, was central to the director’s compelling rethinking of the whole piece.<br />
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</style>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-86681387337372178352017-10-03T10:10:00.000+01:002017-10-03T10:37:39.659+01:00Staatsoper Hamburg: Parsifal30 September 2017<br />
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Before being persuaded to direct the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ring </i>for LA Opera at the beginning of the decade, Achim Freyer had
apparently decided to abandon directing opera to concentrate on painting. Now, however, he also gives a new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Parsifal</i>. And he’s staging <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hänsel
und Gretel </i>at the newly refurbished Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin
in December as well—that glorious work by a composer, Humperdinck, who was of
course intimately bound up with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Parsifal</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span>s</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>early
history in Bayreuth. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZGIMwsq0GVcIBxHx03k5S9-xTWagDrsAKt0orAcz97H3yuclGX7antUQ1yM8WXpnBDwLNZlOHv3ItXKTQOkXtVSw7IbhRXrskRi1UsqTA4c-YJnl6f4hj3B4bz1R0HptsWQOAKxSZFA/s1600/PARSIFAL_HPO_0291.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1073" data-original-width="1600" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZGIMwsq0GVcIBxHx03k5S9-xTWagDrsAKt0orAcz97H3yuclGX7antUQ1yM8WXpnBDwLNZlOHv3ItXKTQOkXtVSw7IbhRXrskRi1UsqTA4c-YJnl6f4hj3B4bz1R0HptsWQOAKxSZFA/s640/PARSIFAL_HPO_0291.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Parsifal </i>at Staatsoper Hamburg, with Wolfgang Koch (centre) as Amfortas (Photo © Hans Jörg Michel)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In Hamburg his take on the Master’s great </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Bühnenweihfestspiel </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is a serious, often
enchanting piece of work, and a staging that is refreshing for
its patience, its willingness to take its time and its singlemindedness. His set, a dark semi-circle with multiple walkways set behind a
gauze stretched right over the orchestra pit, feels like its own self-contained
galaxy.</span></div>
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Numbers and hieroglyph-like objects are dotted about it as
if set free from both weight and significance; an adjustable mirrored
semi-circle hovers above, as does a big metal structure resembling the
mixing attachment of a food processor. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2j3ZO7p13QeBfZY2naLiZinaKAhWuO6Lh-vaxNKPtGJqv4rrciBxjWnv_t8azeJSh8uH8l0c05TXOu5HATxvMox_gdw7Ik_CenId8QCdFVaAinIs6ZZHO5CBBwL4LylX8OEw5L0zm44/s1600/PARSIFAL_HPO_0085.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2j3ZO7p13QeBfZY2naLiZinaKAhWuO6Lh-vaxNKPtGJqv4rrciBxjWnv_t8azeJSh8uH8l0c05TXOu5HATxvMox_gdw7Ik_CenId8QCdFVaAinIs6ZZHO5CBBwL4LylX8OEw5L0zm44/s640/PARSIFAL_HPO_0085.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kwangchul Youn as Gurnemanz (Photo © Hans Jörg Michel))</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Swirls and various Parsifalian keywords are projected (video
by Jakob Klaffs and Hugo Reiss) at various moments onto the gauze, though were difficult to take in
from my seat in row 4 of the stalls. The players, their expressions frozen in
semi-grotesque face paint, drift in and out during the Prelude and seem barely to be
in command of their own destinies thereafter.</span></div>
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Kundry flies in, with the help of naïve stage effects (not always fully realised), at
her various entries; Parsifal bounces in and out and rolls about like some
malfunctioning children’s entertainer; Amfortas, stretched across some sort of
yoke, his body represented by a painted cloth, is manhandled from side to side by a couple of hooded retainers hovering
in a state of semi-invisibility. Titurel consists, in two dimensions, of little more than two arms, a wheelchair and what, to me at least, looked like stubby telescope.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gurnemanz, a crude papier-mâché face suspended in a haphazardly spiralling frame above his head, glides around with little sense of purpose. Squires and
grail knights arm themselves in moments of threat with arbitrary objects: an
oversize spanner, a stuffed rabbit, a dismembered arm. At the climax of the
grail ceremony a small white figure with oversized head and an underlit
lampshade for a skirt makes its way slowly across the stage.</span></div>
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On one level it’s a magical mystery tour de force from
Freyer, who works with the music, surfing its slow-moving waves to sometimes
hypnotic effect. There are plenty of telling little details, too, not least in
the grotesque costume for Vladimir Baykov’s powerfully-sung, leering Klingsor:
an enormous tie covers a bright red patch in his groin, the site of the self-mutilation we see acted out wittily—if that’s the word—at the appropriate point Gurnemanz’s Act 1
narration. <span style="font-size: 12pt;">I liked the bulbous, punky voluptuousness of his Flower
Maidens, too, who manage to combine, like so much of the production, playful irreverence
with an underlying seriousness. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gkKOKlZQOWctnlD7A_pfZoT3ZoD43HnqlDkumoZwwg_X2gaYKZHnEF5oMhIDZKVei-BD4R-6cKHf3ktsGroaJW5JPUT6wFBEoNT3iXi9o0ioRCjW6S_M4UPTRdzNJJ5sybIvzB627WU/s1600/PARSIFAL_HPO_0356.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gkKOKlZQOWctnlD7A_pfZoT3ZoD43HnqlDkumoZwwg_X2gaYKZHnEF5oMhIDZKVei-BD4R-6cKHf3ktsGroaJW5JPUT6wFBEoNT3iXi9o0ioRCjW6S_M4UPTRdzNJJ5sybIvzB627WU/s640/PARSIFAL_HPO_0356.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Claudia Mahnke (Kundry) and Vladimir Baykov (Klingsor) (Photo © Hans Jörg Michel)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">As the show progresses, though, it becomes a case of diminishing returns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having cast
everything into a state weightlessness, Freyer has no interest, it seems, in tethering it back onto anything as the gravity of the final act’s drama
kicks in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The first half of that act, with only the merest hint, through
Sebastian Alphons’s lighting, of Easter greenery, resorts to a somewhat
conventional rehearsal of Wagner’s stage directions. </span>And Wolfgang Koch, sounding slightly under par, was unable
to give specific meaning to his suffering as a bedraggled, lank-hared Amfortas.
With the action never having been allowed too fully take root, the final
redemption amounted simply to a further clearing of the decks, with the set
pulled down and whisked away. We are left with an emptiness both spatial and
conceptual.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghCJPG3g4dFwSZ07i4vYp3YPH-Szqvv0nlpjNhP3Jjsk0ddCUZhMQ8ZHAyvOJlGlaGaeaTae9is2jHHh5JCflhIKsuiCYHGH4AwrPRaW2e2RL0w1uDCKBNBBWujPy54wD_a72OvePo9Uo/s1600/PARSIFAL_HPO_0443.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1041" data-original-width="1600" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghCJPG3g4dFwSZ07i4vYp3YPH-Szqvv0nlpjNhP3Jjsk0ddCUZhMQ8ZHAyvOJlGlaGaeaTae9is2jHHh5JCflhIKsuiCYHGH4AwrPRaW2e2RL0w1uDCKBNBBWujPy54wD_a72OvePo9Uo/s640/PARSIFAL_HPO_0443.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andreas Schager (Parsifal) in Klingsor's magic garden (Photo © Hans Jörg Michel)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Part of the sense of dissatisfaction here might also have
been down to Kent Nagano’s conducting. The orchestral playing
had some wobbles, but I enjoyed his streamlined but largely persuasive account of the
first two acts—are the conductor’s plans for a period-instrument </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Ring </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">with Concerto Köln already
affecting his approach? The third act, however, felt almost evasive in its swiftness. </span>The winding lines of the Prelude came across as dogged,
while elsewhere things remained somewhat earthbound, without conjuring up
enough of sense of anything, however difficult to define, being at stake.</div>
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None of this helped the cast, either. Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz
provided superbly resonant and authoritative foundation for the drama, but was left unable, in the circumstances, to plumb the depths in Act 3, or really to make much of the text. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM1LruvnYZekj5zlHs1avDOO8i2hFR73Z-kbtSQBWxX5NE8JV_ExkTvHJY05LbmLi8OlFYRU1bq5KMkmCN86xAGf094gPTXVr_CV28l-dNZnSB11u4qKOhWVXsHN1gv4iwULRGEzh8L8U/s1600/PARSIFAL_HPO_0967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1600" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM1LruvnYZekj5zlHs1avDOO8i2hFR73Z-kbtSQBWxX5NE8JV_ExkTvHJY05LbmLi8OlFYRU1bq5KMkmCN86xAGf094gPTXVr_CV28l-dNZnSB11u4qKOhWVXsHN1gv4iwULRGEzh8L8U/s640/PARSIFAL_HPO_0967.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andreas Schager (Parsifal) at the close of Act 3 (Photo © Hans Jörg Michel)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Andreas Schager’s Parsifal, dressed in asymmetric
black-and-white, sang powerfully and acted, as usual, with total commitment, but both he
and Claudia Mahnke’s impressive Kundry (rich in the lower register, seductive in the middle if stretched
at the top) struggled to convey their passions and sufferings through the
make-up and, in Mahnke’s case, industrial dreadlocks.</span><br />
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In a statement in the programme, Freyer talks, apparently
unironically, of being obliged to save the essential works of our time from the
mistakes of interpretation. That represents quite a lofty stance, and what he’s offered has its own special beauty and conviction. It doesn’t, however, really offer the compelling alternative he seems to be after. </div>
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-20907710532393515742017-09-19T13:51:00.003+01:002017-09-19T13:57:50.315+01:00Deutsche Oper Berlin: Lucia di Lammermoor17 September 2017<br />
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There’s been a few grumblings around recently about operas
being set in museums. Chicago’s new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra</i>,
if one’s to trust the reviews, is a case in point. Closer to the land of
Walter Scott’s Lammermoor, one thinks back to John Fulljames’s faintly ridiculous Harris Tweed-sponsored
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Donna del Lago </i>at Covent Garden. I
saw a few more examples mentioned on Twitter, too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOoGEAcbjhscGz_OlsIQgbuY-gCC912Qbb2-sL024chqqIDNKeZRI4pWi_2jLjT31UANhNQGbJRmhHy5XXqOLzNiD0JFUz1dMqhE9MdPwNJjBh98YxYwljJgl-E68of5-VYV2yoPAb71o/s1600/WA2017LuciadiLammermoor79PrettyYende_hf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1074" data-original-width="1600" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOoGEAcbjhscGz_OlsIQgbuY-gCC912Qbb2-sL024chqqIDNKeZRI4pWi_2jLjT31UANhNQGbJRmhHy5XXqOLzNiD0JFUz1dMqhE9MdPwNJjBh98YxYwljJgl-E68of5-VYV2yoPAb71o/s640/WA2017LuciadiLammermoor79PrettyYende_hf.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pretty Yende as Lucia at the Deutsche Oper (Photo © Bettina Stöß)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Deutsche Oper’s </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Lucia</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">,
however, is a genuine museum piece. It dates from 1980, but Filippo Sanjust’s
designs seem already to have been deliberately old-fashioned even then. <i>Tromp
l’oeil </i>curtains frame the stage, and a drop curtain features an illustration of a
waify stray with windswept hair and white dress rushing across some barren
landscape.</span></div>
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The stage itself for the first two scenes is pretty
rudimentary: a backdrop with a distant castle, a couple of unimpressive two-dimensional
outcrops of rock, one featuring a static waterfall. Things get a little more concrete in subsequent scenes as we
get into some impressive-looking interiors, but there’s no escaping the
essential fustiness of it all. </div>
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The costumes continue the trend, with flouncy
frocks and ringlets for the ladies and, for the men, austere period outfits
whose manifold details, I suspect, could be named only by historians of dress. (There were hints of tartan, but at least no anachronistic kilts.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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The edition used, too, was a period piece, with the loss of
both the Enrico-Edgardo scene at the start of Act 3 (we went straight into the
‘D’immenso giubilo’ chorus) and a final scene that began with ‘Tombe
degli avi miei’. Fans of the glass harmonica will have been a little
disappointed, too, since Lucia’s mad scene was accompanied by the then traditional
flute (excellently played, though, by Robert Lerch). Ivan Repušić conducted
straightforwardly and dutifully, and certainly could have done more to enliven the
recits. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Then again, with direction at the basic end of the
spectrum – it was notable how Pretty Yende’s Lucia manoeuvred herself to prime
centre-stage position for the start of ‘Quando repito in estasi’ – this was
Donizetti less as drama than as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bel canto</i>
showcase. <span style="font-size: 12pt;">It was also a showcase for the 2011 edition of Plácido Domingo’s
Operalia competition: Yende and her Edgardo, René Barbera, shared the top prize
that year.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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Happily they both delivered the goods. Yende’s voice is pearly
and seductive, bright but never strident, and beautifully controlled. It also
extends with apparent ease right to the very top of the range – she tossed in a few top notes beyond the standard embellishments. Dramatically she
doesn’t necessarily plumb the depths, and I wondered even if her irrepressible
likability as a performer and the inherent sunny optimism of the voice actually detracted from the tragedy. I suspect that a strong directorial hand in a less
somnambulant production would have helped a great deal in that regard, though.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Barbera was similarly left to deliver a stock dramatic
performance. But it’s a pleasingly clean voice, light in both colour and size, and he sang with real elegance, focus and lovely legato. His great final scene was beautifully delivered – with some fine work from the orchestral soloists. There was
an impressive, suitably unstinting Enrico from Noel Bouley, a Deutsche Oper ensemble
member with a notably stentorian top range. Riccardo Zanellato deserves a
mention, too, for his consoling tones as Raimondo, about the only even half-decent
male character in the whole show. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT-Kyrp-E01fwNNKRF3ml3IHCTmgMxPXitKVdUI1jraO6cuZyuc8Ctmyh9BDFvyu-iPsQPRYyHGVGPnb4YPXj7TlMu7LEOTdw1Yl0SYNi9okiP2Sa8BVVq9N94r2CETLTshcJptzKyA-o/s1600/WA2017LuciadiLammermoor217PrettyYende_hf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT-Kyrp-E01fwNNKRF3ml3IHCTmgMxPXitKVdUI1jraO6cuZyuc8Ctmyh9BDFvyu-iPsQPRYyHGVGPnb4YPXj7TlMu7LEOTdw1Yl0SYNi9okiP2Sa8BVVq9N94r2CETLTshcJptzKyA-o/s640/WA2017LuciadiLammermoor217PrettyYende_hf.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Pretty Yende as Lucia at the Deutsche Oper (Photo © Bettina Stöß)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The last production I saw of this work had been Katie
Mitchell’s for the Royal Opera House in London, a staging I disliked but which
was at least interesting for attempting to give the opera’s heroine some
agency, to make her more than simply a passive victim. This production, though, presents her as just that,
in pretty frocks that only pick up the merest hint of blood in the dainty off-stage murder of her husband. </span></div>
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It underlines the irony,
too, that the character’<span style="font-size: 12pt;">s passivity was traditionally contrasted with editions of the score
that placed her musically centre-stage, at the expense, particularly, of Edgardo. As such, though, this museum piece does at least offer an
interesting glimpse into the operatic past. It also just let its cast get on with it, offering a great showcase for some
outstanding singers of the present – and future.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-11506574581209833552017-08-02T15:01:00.000+01:002017-09-17T15:02:11.206+01:00Gundula Janowitz: 80th birthday Interview‘Is it halfway drinkable?’ Gundula Janowitz interrupts herself to check I’m happy with the tea she’s made, particularly worried that it might not be up to an Englishman’s exacting standards. Go back an hour earlier, and I’m hovering nervously outside in a quiet street in Vienna’s Wieden district, south of the famous Naschmarkt and west of Schloss Belvedere, plucking up the courage to press the ‘Janowitz’ buzzer...<br />
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[read the full interview on the <i>Gramophone</i> <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/gundula-janowitz-interview">website</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-71869595162730898762017-07-04T15:04:00.000+01:002017-09-17T15:13:45.578+01:00Bayerische Staatsoper: Die Frau ohne Schatten2 July 2017<br />
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In his semi-serioso “Ten Golden Rules” for conducting dating from the early 1920s, Richard Strauss suggested that Salome and Elektra should be conducted “as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy Music”. He didn’t make any similar public pronouncements about Die Frau ohne Schatten, which is, of course, Fairy Music, if not exactly in the Mendelssohnian mould...<br />
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Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-frau-ohne-schatten-bavarian-state-opera-petrenko-warlikowski-szczesniak-nationaltheater-july-2017">Bachtrack</a>Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-67937856672879362212017-05-29T12:01:00.001+01:002017-05-29T12:01:49.149+01:00Staatsoper Berlin: Don Carlo26 May 2017<br />
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Any opportunity to see <i>Don Carlo</i>(<i>s</i>) is difficult to resist, and happily it’s possible in Berlin to allay any sorrow at missing the Royal Opera House’s latest revival with the fact that both the Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper have it on their <i>Spielpläne</i> this season. This was the penultimate performance at the former, and I'm already eyeing dates at the latter—although Anja Harteros’s planned appearances there in the Deutsche Oper’s Verdi-Tage next May are likely to also be on several people’s radar already.<br />
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At the Staatsoper we had the standard four-act Italian version. Philipp Himmelmann’s 2004 production is an austere, concentrated affair with one main idea, as far as I could tell, that it sticks to with admirable persistence: domesticating the grand world-historical forces that define the drama (or at least as Verdi and Schiller portray it).<br />
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We opened then with a tableau of an awkward family meal—and this is certainly a family with a few reasons for awkwardness—that reminded me in passing of the opening tableau of Philipp Stölzl’s <i>Forza del destino</i> in Munich. This table remained central throughout the evening, the other elements of the drama often having to work around it.<br />
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Eating, drinking and even ironing played a constant role: Elisabeth feeds the Comtesse D’Aremberg a slice of consolatory cake during ‘Non pianger, mia compagna’; in a clever little touch we get a hint of Philip’s philistinism as he merrily over-salts a dish before tasting it; the whole evening climaxes with a distraught Elisabeth having to pour tea for the Grand Inquisitor.<br />
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Eboli is perhaps most interestingly developed in this new take on the piece, portrayed as a voracious vamp in the Veil Song, at the head of what looks like the militant wing of St Trinians. She often appears in striking silhouette at the back of the stage—Johannes Leiacker’s set, helped by Davy Cunningham’s lighting, makes powerful use of sliding panels—and features, to powerful effect, at the start of the introduction to ‘Ella giammai m’amo’, finishing off a clearly joyless sexual encounter with Philip.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiiyyHD6d2rKP5gKEpPmeyXuzehRbrPObtOnegctWEKEYXWCTH6D1yWO-dlWyqqbYQvA4gEgQ9hy1PtKdJwk-O0dkY3Zps3ifLp_YIKbTNjaoytkeJPkcwyDWl-K5qR2qEGcQZABPZGw/s1600/Don+Carlo+018_Monika+Rittershaus_hf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="881" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiiyyHD6d2rKP5gKEpPmeyXuzehRbrPObtOnegctWEKEYXWCTH6D1yWO-dlWyqqbYQvA4gEgQ9hy1PtKdJwk-O0dkY3Zps3ifLp_YIKbTNjaoytkeJPkcwyDWl-K5qR2qEGcQZABPZGw/s640/Don+Carlo+018_Monika+Rittershaus_hf.jpg" width="352" /></a>Marina Prudenskaya performs the role magnificently, turning in an impressively agile Veil Song and an impassioned, powerful ‘O don fatale’ and throwing herself gamely into all the challenges of the production. René Pape’s Philip also gains in complexity as a character from the encounter at the start of his big scene. He sings in powerful, smooth phrases throughout, but achieves touching melancholic grandeur here, the scene leading into a compelling encounter with Mikhail Kazakov’s implacable, bitingly sung Grand Inquisitor.<br />
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Fabio Sartori’s Carlo is tirelessly sung, offering real ringing power if the occasional rough edge. Massimo Cavalletti (one of two late replacement Posas) has a pleasingly grainy and Italiniate sound. He was a little inconsistent at the top of the voice early on, but settled down for a potent account of the death scene. Lianna Haroutounian remains a very decent Elisabeth and sings with commitment and, especially in the impressively focused top of the voice, technical security. but for me doesn’t quite command the regal quality—vocally or theatrically—that the role demands.<br />
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Similarly, Massimo Zanetti’s conducting here failed for some of the evening to capture the dark grandeur of Verdi’s score, occasionally feeling a little efficient. There was some terrific playing from the Staatskapelle (to which one can add the pleasure of hearing this opera in the relatively modest Schillertheater), though, and Zenetti’s account seemed to gather accumulated weight as it went along.<br />
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-4956196927027694902017-05-29T11:42:00.001+01:002017-05-29T11:43:11.738+01:00Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim: Schubert Symphonies IIFranz Schubert<br />
Symphony no. 5 in B flat major, D.485<br />
Symphony no. 4 in C minor, "Tragic", D 417<br />
Symphony no. 6 in C major, D.589<br />
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Pierre Boulez Saal, 25 May 2017<br />
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There are pros and cons when it comes to the programming of cycles. And sometimes doing so seems little more than an excuse to smuggle in yet more performances of works we already hear too often under the cloak of completism. But if Schubert’s final two symphonies hardly need a helping hand, the first six rare visitors to the concert hall in my experience. Daniel Barenboim’s Schubert cycle with his Staatskapelle Berlin at the Boulezsaal, which reached its midway point with this second concert, is making as eloquent a case as possible for them.<br />
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[Read the full review at<a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-schubert-barenboim-staatskapelle-berlin-pierre-boulez-saal-may-2017"> Bachtrack</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-88114176221905153152017-05-25T14:43:00.000+01:002017-05-25T14:43:06.692+01:00Deutsche Oper Berlin: L'elisir d'amore23 May 2017<br />
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Repertory houses are full of surprises, or at least gems hidden away in their <i>Spielpläne</i>. In the autumn it was Anja Harteros’s <a href="http://hugoshirley.blogspot.de/2016/11/deutsche-oper-berlin-tosca.html">Tosca</a> for a couple of performances at the Deutsche Oper. And here it was the first of two performances of <i>L’elisir d’amore</i> with Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak as the lovers (the second is on May 27).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">L'elisir d'amore at the Deutsche Oper (photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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It was a performance to restore some faith in humanity on a day when such a thing was sorely needed—an opera, too, that in its own joyous, honest and moving way, celebrates life and love, as well as humour, mischief and the qualities of a good (or even bad) Bordeaux.<br />
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Irina Brook’s staging does a pretty good job of communicating all that, despite rather than because of its main <i>Konzept</i>. It sees Adina recast as the leader of a travelling troupe of actors (think a female Canio, without the temper) that is putting on a dramatic performance of the Tristan and Isolde story. Noëlle Ginefri’s set consists of a rickety stage, surrounded by the troupe’s trailers. It’s all kind of modernish dress (costumes by Sylvie Martin-Hyszka), but it’s difficult to tell—many of the chorus mill around in their medieval Cornish outfits, and this far into the Italian countryside clearly no one’s up with the main trends of the fashion world.<br />
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Some of the troupe warm up before the show begins, and there are a couple of times when they rehearse during the evening, before, at the close, Adina and Nemorino take to the stage in costume—presumably as the ill-fated Cornish couple—at the close. The <i>Tristan</i> references are of course a clever little joke that Felice Romani took from Eugène Scribe’s libretto for <i>Le Philtre</i>, one given even greater piquancy by Wagner’s subsequent treatment of the subject, but Brook seems to take it onto another meta-level that Donizetti’s little opera can’t quite sustain.<br />
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It also raises questions. Nemorino seems to be some sort of cleaner, but does he travel around with the actors? Is he there to clean this rustic piazza? Do Belcore and his regiment follow them around as well? Wouldn’t a troupe of cynical and, by definition, well travelled actors prove a tough audience for Dulcamara’s shtick, or be unimpressed by the magic, here, of his assistant, ‘Nick’?<br />
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I didn’t let such questions detain me for long: they and the <i>Konzept</i> itself could happily be tidied away into the background and ignored, not least because of the sheer sense of fun brought to the piece. And at least the production did allow for plenty of impressive tomfoolery from Alagna, who threw himself into his characterisation with infectious glee. His singing, too, was filled with sunlight. The tone is a little looser these days, and he seemed to have a bit of a frog in his throat in ‘Una furtive lagrima’, but it’s still a voice of rare Italianate warmth and a pleasure to hear, especially in this lighter repertoire—although he did unleash a Manrico-esque top note or two, and occasionally wandered a little from the the conductor's tempo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">L'elisir d'amore at the Deutsche Oper (photo © Monika Rittershaus)</td></tr>
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Kurzak’s Adina is hardly less enjoyable, her bright, creamy timbre employed in a performance of quick-witted verve and bounce, her coloratura despatched with applomb. Her new role in this production risked turning her into an unlikeable diva. But she struck that balance well, retaining more than enough of the character’s original charm. Her ‘Prendi, per me sei libero’, for me far and away the most beautiful moment in the score, was exquisitely done—and it was accompanied with the utmost sensitivity by the orchestra under Moritz Gnann, whose conducting was a model of bel canto fluidity and flexibility throughout.<br />
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Mikheil Kiria was a terrific Dulcamara, mixing clean articulation with a bright, lively baritone; and Thomas Lehman was suitably strutting and handsome-sounding as Belcore. Alexandra Hutton’s Giannetta was a constantly vivid presence, not least in gamely leading a couple of dance routines.<br />
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A few things to argue with in the production then—not least its basic premise—but this was a gentle, joyous and memorable <i>L’elisir</i>, in which everyone on stage seemed to be having at least as much fun as I was.<br />
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Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-15832912463563119882017-05-24T15:46:00.001+01:002017-05-24T15:46:27.399+01:00Oper Leipzig: Cinq-Mars20 May 2017<br />
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You’d be forgiven for never having heard of <i>Cinq-Mars</i> – either Gounod’s 1877 opera or the historical character who gives the work its title. The 11th rarity to be revived by the Centre de la musique française at Palazzetto BruZane, and recorded with their support, it now follows Felicien David’s Herculaneum (staged at Wexford last year) in also receiving a first production since the 19th century. Oper Leipzig, whose Generalmusikdirektor and Intendant, Ulf Schirmer, conducted the recording, has done it proud...<br />
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[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-gounod-cinq-mars-pilavachi-oper-leipzig-may-2017">Bachtrack</a>]<br />
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<br />Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135235294360336408.post-3005743899885571112017-05-21T10:35:00.002+01:002017-05-24T07:29:31.944+01:00Andsnes; Berliner Philharmoniker/Orozco-Estrada: Strauss, Rachmaninov, ShostakovichStrauss R., Macbeth, Op.23<br />
Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto no. 4 in G minor, Op.40<br />
Shostakovich, Symphony no. 5 in D minor, Op.47<br />
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Philharmonie, 18 May 2017<br />
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This concert, as the programme told us, featured composers who all were hits, one way or another, with their public – and, I suppose, other subsequent publics. But Strauss tone poems and Rachmaninov piano concertos hardly come less popular than those we heard here.<br />
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Strauss’s Macbeth (composed 1886-88) seems at least to be witnessing a small upsurge in its fortunes, and this concert’s conductor, the Colombian Andrés Orozco-Estrada, has recently recorded it with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been chief conductor since 2014...<br />
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[Read the full review at <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-strauss-rachmaninov-berliner-philharmoniker-orozco-estrada-andsnes-berlin-may-2017">Bachtrack</a>]Hugo Shirleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317066207576444971noreply@blogger.com0