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I love to wade many times into the same river. Perhaps because I was paying attention during my classes in ancient philosophy and I know that there is basically no way to wade into the same river even once, because by the time we are up to our knees in water, everything will already be different – the current will have flowed forward, the stones on the bottom will have shifted, our bodies will be covered in goose bumps. Observing these subtle Heraclitean changes has always attracted me more than wandering around the world in search of more and more new rivers, so I decided  – after last year’s enlightenment by Tristan – to return to Longborough for Tannhäuser and see what would happen this time.

It was a doubly sentimental journey for me, for it was thanks to Tannhäuser that I fell madly in love with Wagner and with opera in general. With the pure and naïve love of a fourth-grader who has signed up for the children’s choir at Warsaw’s Grand Theatre and, shortly thereafter, gone out onstage with the pilgrims’ choir in Act III. From that show, above all, I remembered my amazement that the rocks were made of some weird foam and gave way beneath each step. After that, I began to listen (this was back in the days when Poles were still able to, or at any rate wanted to play and sing Wagner). After the première, we purposely came to the theatre early to cheer on our colleague in the role of the Shepherd in Act I. After two years, I got a tiny role as a Page, so I got to know Act II inside out. Tannhäuser played 34 times in Warsaw, which meant an average of 8 shows per season. Enough to catch the Wagner bug and, by the end of primary school, hear the entire Ring on the same stage – and that, in the captivating rendition of Kungliga Operan in Stockholm, which appeared in Warsaw under the baton of none other than Berislav Klobučar. Those shows – visually tasteful, extraordinarily economical in form, growing out of the spirit of German Modernism – also formed my theatrical taste. Annelies Corrodi, the stage designer for the Warsaw Tannhäuser, learned her craft with Helmut Jürgens, who was associated with the Bayerische Staatsoper after the war. The stagers of the Swedish Tetralogy – Folke Abenius and Jan Brazda –  turned out to be imitators as faithful as they were intelligent of Wieland Wagner, the great reformer of Bayreuth.

So one can say that in my childhood, I had the good fortune of contact with authentic Wagner, interpreted in accordance with the composer’s intentions and with trust in the power of the music itself. No doubt this is why I yielded completely to the charm of the Longborough Festival Opera, a venue so modest that there is no way to imagine any kind of director’s orgy there; but most importantly, an opera led by the hand of a master who has many times now proven that he is one of the most superb Wagner conductors on the planet. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Anthony Negus is entirely content with his position at Longborough; he makes no recordings, chooses the (often unknown) singers himself, and counts on a handful of enthusiasts who will come out to the Cotswolds to acquaint themselves with the fleeting effect of his work at a countryside Bayreuth converted from a chicken farm.

Alison Kettlewell (Venus) and Neal Cooper (Tannhäuser). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis.

Tannhäuser, despite being placed chronologically between Der fliegende Holländer and Lohengrin, touches upon themes characteristic of Wagner’s mature œuvre: deliverance through love, conflict between the earthly world of the senses and the transcendent world of ideas, between religion and the sphere of the profane. The composer made corrections to the opera several times, and reportedly even so died in the conviction that he still owed the world the ‘real’ Tannhäuser. Tracking the sometimes small, but sometimes essential differences among the original Dresden version, the Paris version of 16 years later and the hybrid Viennese version of 1875 opens up a broad field for interpretation. With whom did Wagner actually identify? With the mysterious title character whose fervent ‘Busslied’, i.e. ‘Song of Atonement’, became a point of departure for the later legend of the knight seduced by Venus? With Wolfram von Eschenbach, one of the greatest masters of medieval epic poetry, who provided him with the inspiration for Lohengrin, Parsifal and indirectly also Tristan? Or perhaps with the peerless lyric poet Walther von der Vogelweide, the most distinguished representative of Minnesang, whom Wagner for some reason pushed into the background of the singers’ contest at Wartburg Castle? Why does the innocent Elisabeth choose Tannhäuser, not Wolfram, who so beautifully sets forth the essence of courtly love in his song ‘Blick ich umher in diesem edlen Kreise’? A certain clue is tossed out by the composer himself in removing Walther’s solo from the Paris version of Act II, as if it were important to him to emphasize the contrast between spiritual and sensual desire, and to load the entire conflict onto the shoulders of the two main male protagonists. Tannhäuser is equally as fractured and ambiguous as the life story of Wagner himself; the characters appearing in it, multidimensional; the music accompanying them, full of contradictions and harshly conflicting symbols.

Erika Mädi Jones (Elisabeth) and Neal Cooper (Tannhäuser). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis.

I came to Longborough for a dress rehearsal that went reasonably smoothly, not counting the forced technical break in Act I and the ensuing slight nervousness among the performers, who pulled themselves together in a flash after two decisive interventions by the conductor. The musical narrative pressed inexorably forward from the first measures of the overture, not at all because of brisk tempi – rather because of lyrical motifs meticulously brought into the foreground and clear tutti chords, all underlined by exquisite articulation, especially in the strings. Negus conducts the Wagnerian orchestra like a chamber ensemble, not hesitating to use ‘old-fashioned’ portamenti, subtle tempo fluctuations, expression-laden changes in dynamics, bringing to mind the legendary recordings under the baton of Willem Mengelberg and Bruno Walter.

He requires a similar passion – which should in no way be confused with a forcing of the volume – from his singers, who are meticulously selected not only in terms of vocal capabilities, but also voice colour and skill in building convincing characters. The title role was played by Neal Cooper, who a few weeks before had gone onstage in Act III of Tannhäuser at Covent Garden as an emergency substitute for the indisposed Peter Seiffert. Cooper has a powerful voice of characteristic colour – quite rough and gravelly, sometimes indeed aggressive, sometimes shockingly seductive – in short, ideally fitting for the role of an internally inconsistent man inspiring extreme emotions. His trump card is exquisite German and a perfect feel for the text, thanks to which the ‘Rom-Erzählung’ was transformed into a monologue based on an ideal unity of music and word, evolving from complaint to derisive fury to dull despair. The only other thing I needed for complete satisfaction was a softer polishing of phrases and a certain dose of lyricism, which I got with interest from Hrólfur Saemundsson in the role of Wolfram. The Icelandic singer had a not-too-big, but very wisely used, deep-sounding baritone – it had been a long time since I had heard an ‘O du mein holder Abendstern’ in which nothing was lacking either at the top or at the bottom. The true revelation of the evening turned out to be Erika Mädi Jones (Elisabeth) – a dark, purebred jugendlich dramatischer Sopran, still a tad insecure in terms of intonation, but with such power of expression that after her ‘Haltet ein!’ in Act II, half the audience was sobbing. It took Alison Kettlewell (Venus) a little longer to hit her stride; her singing annoyed me a bit at the beginning with its too-harsh transitions between registers; but I have to admit that her authoritative, sensual voice creates a superb contrast with the vocal image of the innocent Elisabeth. There were basically no weaknesses in the cast; the 20-odd-person choir sounded cleaner and more powerful than not a few jaded opera ensembles three times its size.

Hrólfur Saemundsson (Wolfram) and Neal Cooper. Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis.

The staging was prepared by the same team that had previously been involved in the production of the entire Ring at Longborough: Alan Privett (stage director), Kjell Torriset (stage designer) and Ben Ormerod (lighting designer). British critics, enamored of more visually spectacular presentations, again grumbled about the cottage character of this production, which sometimes indeed gave one the impression that the working people of the surrounding cities and villages had been employed for it. I myself have to admit that in comparison with the ascetic vision of Tristan, built basically just with lighting, the concept for Tannhäuser was lacking in coherence and consistency. I also was not convinced by the pantomime played to the sounds of the overture, featuring Wagner submerged in a creative ferment and his wife Minna trying unsuccessfully to make contact with him. The singers’ contest at Wartburg Castle, however, was seductive not only in the beauty of its imagery, but also in its excellent handling of the characters. I also forgave the creators the lack of a pilgrim’s walking stick turned green when an enormous thurible began to swing across the stage – a clear and legible sign of the protagonist’s final transfiguration.

Now all I can do is dream. That I will live to hear Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Parsifal or Lohengrin under the baton of this wizard. Anthony Negus restores the human dimension to Wagner’s music, stripping it of dull pomposity, revealing its relationships with tradition and perverse play with 19^th-century contemporaneity. He recreates live what was lost in the technically imperfect recordings, destroyed by the passing years, of earlier masters. He awakens dormant faith in the power of the score, in the truth of the feelings contained therein. In a year, Tristan will be revived. Yet again, it will be necessary to wade into the same river. As Szymborska wrote (here in translation by Stanisław Barańczak): ‘Nothing can ever happen twice. / In consequence, the sorry fact is / that we arrive here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice.’

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski.

Gustav Mahler wrote his Symphony no. 8 as if the Creator Spirit itself had filled him. He composed it in the peace and quiet of his ‘hut’ near the hamlet of Maiernigg, at the edge of the Carinthian Wörthersee – in the same place where his Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder and previous symphonies starting with no. 4 had been written. This time, however, he worked at an insane tempo. He arrived in Maiernigg in June 1906 to make essential corrections to the orchestration of Symphony no. 7. In a sudden burst of inspiration, however, he ended up focusing on a new piece which he intended from the very beginning to open with the 9th-century hymn ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’, which is performed during the liturgy for Pentecost, among other occasions. The original plan to create a reasonably traditional four-movement symphony quickly gave way to the idea of a work ‘so peculiar in content in form that there is no way to describe it directly’. The three subsequent segments merged into a powerful, separate movement based on the text of the last scene from Goethe’s Faust, in which the cleansing of the protagonist is fully realized: after death, the time for action ceases, the time comes to accept the gift of love – in all of its manifestations, evolving however from the earthly, sensual love enclosed in words and images, through all kinds of higher forms, up to its final fulfillment, in which it approaches the ‘unspeakable’. In the Eighth, later called the Symphony of a Thousand by virtue of its enormous performance ensemble, the religious sphere rubs shoulders with the human, even in the purely musical sphere. In the first movement, the Creator Spirit comes down to earth – with the descending fourth in the initial ‘Veni’. The penitent souls in the second movement rise ever closer to Heaven on the same notes – this time, however, ascending. The prayerful key of E-flat major collides with the ecstatic, passionate, extremely distant key of E major. The Gregorian hymn, which in Mahler’s rendition has taken on all of the characteristics of a motet – with a powerful double fugue set in the Bach tradition – finds a peculiar development and recapitulation in the ‘Faust’ movement. The plea for heavenly grace will be fulfilled by the redeeming power of love. Superficially contradictory visions of the hereafter will come together in the form of a universal desire for the greatest good.

And wonders never cease: for the audience at the Munich world première in 1910, all of these ideas were considerably more intelligible than for contemporary listeners. The work scored a staggering success incomparable with the reception of any of Mahler’s other compositions. It disturbed no one that in this concept of awesome proportions, the orchestral song merged imperceptibly into a cantata, that the masterful combination of musical forms does not permit one to determine whether it is still an oratorio, or perhaps now an opera, or perhaps yet something else. Mahler exhausted the limits of the choral symphony, just as Pérotin had previously brought the evolution of organum to its end. After that, there was nowhere else to go. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Eighth was to find so many enemies in the future, accusing the composer of gigantomania, cheap optimism, a predilection for kitsch and a triumph of expression over content. It was recorded with reluctance and performed rarely – not only because of the logistical problems in putting together a colossal orchestra, three choral ensembles and eight soloists, but also on account of the difficulty in weighing the sound proportions of this behemoth. In the massive tutti passages, the subtleties of the orchestration were often lost; singers able to pierce through the unrelenting wall of sound often possessed voices as sonorous as they were hideous in tone color. Even in my favorite recording with the London Philharmonic under the baton of Klaus Tennstedt (with excellent soloists, among them Jadwiga Rappé), there are flaws in intonation, and the whole leaves an impression of dissatisfaction with the sound in the choruses. Interestingly, what still makes the best impression is discs recorded live – as if this riveting musical confession of faith resisted all attempts at sober calculation.

This time, I had an unusual opportunity – three days before the dress rehearsal for Tannhäuser in Longborough (about which I shall write shortly), the combined ensembles of the Opera North orchestra, Leeds Philharmonic Chorus, Leeds Festival Chorus, Bradford Catholic Youth Choir and soloists – who without exception had participated in this year’s complete rendition of the Wagner Ring cycle, or in one of the previous ‘segments’ of this endeavor realized by Opera North in the period from 2011 to 2014 – gave us the Eighth under the baton of David Hill. In a hall of equally tremendous proportions to the symphony itself – the auditorium of Leeds Town Hall, described brilliantly in Liquid Modernity by Zygmunt Bauman, longtime department of sociology chairman at the University there. The monstrous Town Hall building, erected in the 1850s according to a design by Cuthbert Brodrick, was until recently not only the most magnificent, but also the tallest building in Leeds: a brick-and-mortar symbol of the progress, work ethic and timeless values of the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, its interior houses the largest three-manual organ in Europe. It is difficult to imagine better conditions for a performance of the Symphony of a Thousand – despite the quite capricious acoustics of this hall, recently improved by the installation of a multi-segmented canopy over the stage but remaining, to put it delicately, none too selective. I also had high expectations from the concept of Hill, a distinguished organist and conductor with enormous choral experience.

Interior of Leeds Town Hall. Photo: Magdalena Romańska.

For the most part, my expectations were fulfilled. After well over ten years of work with Richard Farnes, the Opera North orchestra – the only ensemble in the British Isles that combines opera and concert activity throughout the entire season – plays with a gorgeous, round and simultaneously fresh sound, retaining extraordinary sensitivity to all manner of changes in dynamics and tempo. What I missed with Tennstedt – that is, complete engagement and a juicy sound in the choruses – I got with interest from David Hill, who effectively emboldened not only the little singers from the Bradford Catholic Youth Choir, but also the members of the festival choir, not to mention his own ensemble, the Leeds Philharmonic. Hill conducted at quite fast tempi, very skillfully building and releasing the culminations, beautifully layering the texture and emphasizing the details of the intricate polyphony.

However, he did not manage to seal up the apparent break between the two movements of the symphony – indeed, if anything, he widened the gap with his management of the pause between the Latin hymn and the ‘secular’ final scene from Faust. Frankly, I got the impression that he had treated the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ a bit dismissively, as it were not perceiving the subtle play with the musical material of the two movements which is essential to combine Mahler’s concept into a single whole. More importantly, however, he did not take care to balance the sound proportions in the solo ensemble, which fell apart into a female group decidedly more audible but of less sensitive musicianship, and three male voices singing with beautiful tone color and superbly polished phrasing, but often drowned out in the tutti passages. The intonation slip-ups and excessive vibrato of soprano Lee Bisset, I will chalk up to her recently having given birth and had a difficult last season; it is more difficult for me to reconcile myself to the screaming high notes and stentorian manner of Katherine Broderick – who was, judging from the reviews, highly rated by the local critics. The indisposed Kate Valentine in the role of Una Poenitentium was substituted at the last minute by Paula Sides – a singer experienced in the Baroque repertoire – with a nevertheless superb result. Of the three anchorites in the second movement, I was a bit disappointed by Andrew Foster-Williams (Pater Ecstaticus), one of my favorite British baritones, who performed his short solo in a very cultured manner, but with a clearly tired voice. A better impression was made by Michael Druiett (Pater Profundus), gifted with a charming, velvety bass-baritone with a beautifully open top register – though he too sang, as it were, without conviction. Peter Wedd (Pater Marianus), as usual, saved up reserves for the end – his ‘Blicket auf’ floated in a truly ‘enraptured’ manner, carried out with ardent yet highly lyrical phrasing, in an ideally controlled, meaty-sounding voice.

During one of rehearsals for the concert. Photo: Leeds Philharmonic Chorus.

All of this, however, was repaid by the final ‘Chorus Mysticus’, which built up here, subsided there, leapt upward, sat down on the slope of a mountain ravine, and finally exploded in ecstatic praise to the Eternal Feminine and merged with the recurring ‘Veni Creator’ motif. All that was lost in us here is corrected.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Before the Glasgow première of Rusalka, the local press announced the grand return of Dvořák’s masterpiece after over half a century’s absence from the stages of Scotland. This is a somewhat misleading statement, because Scottish experiences are limited to five shows – and those, given by the ensemble of the National Theatre in Prague as part of a grand review of Czech operas at the Edinburgh Festival in 1964. Aside from Rusalka, the Scots also encountered Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová for the first time. The remaining works, From the House of the Dead by the latter composer, along with Smetana’s Dalibor and Cikker’s Resurrection, were completely unknown in the British Isles. Forasmuch as Janáček’s legacy – in large measure thanks to the later efforts of Sir Charles Mackerras – gained a broad audience of British fans and set forth from there to conquer stages all over the world, Rusalka – which was, after all, composed at the same time as Jenůfa – finally gained universal recognition only less than 20 years ago; and even so, it is not a frequent guest in the repertoire of the great opera houses. This is partly by virtue of the staggering technical difficulties presented to the performers in the lead roles; but above all, on account of the gap between the relatively conservative score and the extremely Modernist libretto abounding in symbols and hidden meanings. Stage directors unaware of these riches either present the opera in the spirit of a naïve, though gloomy fairytale for adults, or attempt to set the conflict outlined in it in a contemporary context, which results in a stylization of the title character as a prostitute kidnapped from a bordello, or as the repressed victim of a pedophile.

Meanwhile, Jaroslav Kvapil’s libretto – aside from its numerous references to Andersen, Friedrich Fouqué and the Melusine legends – also draws inspiration from the fairytale-naturalistic plays of Hauptmann and the late, symbolist œuvre of Ibsen. Kvapil had already touched upon the clash of two world orders previously, in his own dramas. He was a superb stage director, one of the pioneers of Czech Modernist theatre. His Rusalka, brilliantly constructed in the linguistic and dramaturgical planes, is a masterpiece unto itself, betraying an odd kinship with the œuvre of Oscar Wilde. It is a fairytale about lovers imprisoned not between reality and the realm of magic, but rather between life and death. It is a tale of the futility of all kind of sacrifices, always made at the wrong time – a pessimistic and decadent tale, but one not devoid of the grotesque or of black humor. In other words, it displays the literary face of Eastern European Modernism, cut by the blade of plebeian wit and reflected in the dark depths of a fairytale lake.

After previous experience with the theatre of Antony McDonald, who is also – and perhaps above all – a stage designer sensitive to and conscious of tradition, I had no doubt that his concept would get to the bottom of this grim story. I did not expect, however, that it would do so with such power. The director has introduced a few important changes to the Grange Park Opera staging (2008) now being revived in Glasgow; but even back then, he garnered praise for his faithfulness to the text and the perspicacity with which he transferred the content of the score and libretto to the stage without imposing new meanings upon them. I was convinced of the rightness of these compliments already during the overture, which was illustrated with a Terry Gilliam-style collage animation. The ‘upside-down mermaid’ lying at the bottom of the lake, a creature with the head of a fish and the legs and bare loins of a woman, came straight from Magritte’s canvas entitled L’Invention collective. The Surrealist painting from 1934 clearly reflects what is most important in Rusalka: the reversal of the fairytale order of things. Let us prepare for the tale of a water nymph who, to her own undoing, allows herself to be beguiled by a human being.

Anne Sophie Duprels as Rusalka, Peter Wedd as The Prince. Photo: James Glossop.

In his stagings, McDonald likes to allude to the context in which a work was written. This time, he passed his vision through a filter of Modernist aesthetics. The forest of tilted tree trunks and the lake suggested by black, immobile waves emerging from a trapdoor is inevitably associated with German Expressionism, but also with the legendary Prague stage designs of Vlastislav Hofman from the 1920s. The gloomy draperies, the antlers hung beneath the ceiling around the ballroom, and even the characteristic chairs in Act II are, as it were, taken straight from his later designs for Ostrovsky’s The Forest at the National Theatre. The Prince’s retinue parades about in Austrian hunting costumes; the ladies at the wedding-that-never-happened have Klimt-like hairstyles. The drastic transformation of Rusalka the Mermaid into a woman takes place at the home of Ježibaba – we figure out the details for ourselves from the shadows crawling over the walls and the bucket of blood poured afterwards into the lake. The protagonist loses her power of speech and her fish tail; she does not, however, completely lose her previous identity. The image of a fish’s body torments her at every step: in the witch’s dress, laced up in a manner resembling a fish’s spine; in the Foreign Princess’ bright red creation that makes her look like a salmon swimming upstream to the spawning ground; in the ghostly pictures from the Prince’s kitchen, where the servants dress absolutely real mackerels, gutting them in bloody gloves.

The rest plays out in a sphere of precisely-polished theatrical symbols. The doctor called to attend to Rusalka is astounded to discover that the patient lacks knee reflexes. The Prince places his hand on her forehead several times – in a reversed gesture of parental care for a feverish child. While preparing for the wedding, Rusalka spends too much time enjoying a bath in the tab, and when dragged out of the water, she stretches out like a fish caught on a hook. Covered with a veil, she falls into a panic and struggles as if in a net. The artificiality of the human world finds clear reflection in the famous polonaise – danced with wine glasses, napkins and soup spoons by the guests gathered at the table; and the sincerity of the wood sprites’ world, in their lascivious, carefree and… sprightly dances (choreographed by Lucy Burge), which are not interrupted even by Rusalka’s tragedy.

What makes the greatest impression, however, is the final duet. It appears that McDonald was aware of a strange – though perhaps only superficial – flaw in Kvapil’s libretto. By what miracle does the Prince hear Rusalka, since Ježibaba has not removed the curse from her? It may be that he actually doesn’t hear her at all. Perhaps he only carries on with his mad monologue and, unable to wait for a response, answers himself. Rusalka – now dressed in white and in a snow-white wig – keeps her distance from the Prince. Finally, she gives up and, with a facial expression of which the Snow Queen herself would be proud, kisses him violently on the lips. The Prince goes limp, falls to the ground, assuring her that he is dying a happy man; but even at such a moment, he will not know the passionate embrace of his chosen lady. The phenomenally-arranged stage lighting (Wolfgang Goebbel) sucks the rest of the blood out of both of them. The demon of death departs.

Peter Wedd as The Prince. Photo: James Glossop.

Stuart Stratford, named artistic director of the Scottish Opera nearly a year ago, has only now decided to prepare a production under his own baton. The conductor, who after studying at Cambridge with David Parry spent three years honing his craft under the watchful eye of the legendary Ilya Musin in St. Petersburg, has a superb feel for the Slavic opera idiom. One could even say that at moments, he feels it too well – delighting in the velvety sound of the strings and the subtle, slightly hazy sound of the wind instruments, he sometimes dragged the tempi excessively, putting the singers’ capabilities to a difficult test. We should remember, however, that in the fragments in which the orchestra’s work plays a momentous role – for instance, in the famous ‘duet’ of the Prince and Rusalka at the end of Act I, where Dvořák threw the entire weight of the title character’s muteness onto the shoulders of the instrumentalists, but especially in the opera’s cathartic finale, with the frustrated yearning motif played in retrograde by fortissimo brass – the brilliantly skillful accumulation and release of tension was impressive. Stratford has a very vivid sonic imagination and is able to convey his intentions to the orchestra, which in the case of a work sparkling with such a rich harmonic language is inestimable.

Lucy Mae Lowndes, Federica Esposito and Emma Laister as Dancing Dryads. Photo: James Glossop.

Another advantage of the Scottish Rusalka is the superb cast, although I am sorry to have to admit that its weakest link turned out to be the performer of the title role. Anne Sophie Duprels has the perfect look for this role, her acting technique is also impressive, but her otherwise pretty soprano voice is decidedly too ‘thin’, and her attempts to artificially darken her voice – without sufficient support – resulted in problems with intonation and excessive vibrato, particularly severe in the famous aria ‘Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém’. The ladies who played Ježibaba and the Foreign Princess came out decidedly better. The experienced and technically splendid Leah-Marian Jones  created a witch bordering on caricature, without violating the rules of good taste. Natalya Romaniw in the part of the calculating seductress displayed all the values of a powerful and yet clear, rounded soprano voice. In a class unto himself was Sir Willard White (Vodník) – one of the most distinguished bass-baritones of the 20^th century, now 70 years old, who from act to act built a clearer and clearer, more and more tragic characterization of Rusalka’s father – the most human of the non-human protagonists of this drama. Also deserving of favorable mention are singers cast in supporting roles, especially Julian Hubbard (the Gamekeeper), who is departing from the baritone repertoire in the direction of tenor roles – the young singer has not only a charming voice and quite nice technique, but also an extraordinary sense of humor. The great revelation, however, was Peter Wedd. Throughout last season, he consistently worked on the depth of sound and volume essential for the role of Tristan; thus, I was initially concerned about whether he would be able to keep his now fully-Wagnerian voice under control in the role of the Prince – a heroic role, but one requiring a large dose of lyricism and, above all, a large range. Fortunately, my fears turned out to be groundless. Wedd has a feel for Dvořák’s peculiarly ‘Slavic’ phrasing, and his breathing technique works perfectly: he does not attack the high notes, but rather draws them out gradually, according to the logic of the musical process. His greatest asset is a secure, golden middle range, from which he fluidly, almost imperceptibly moves into other registers. One has to be a first-rate artist to sing this role at all – Wedd has polished it in its tiniest details, chiseling the individual sentences like a woodcarver. Hearing his ‘umírám ve tvém objetí’, not a few of his professional colleagues would turn green with envy.

The Scottish Opera’s latest production is yet more evidence that masterpieces do not need reformers – rather wise, humble servants. Sometimes it is worthwhile to go outside the bounds of one’s own ego and find more interesting things in the score itself.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Frenzy, insanity or mental illness? The autumn season at the Welsh National Opera, arranged under the heading of ‘Madness’, has obliged us to reflect upon several forms of lunacy. Three compositions superficially divided by everything: a masterpiece of Baroque opera, the swansong of a master of classic bel canto and a musical defying all attempts at categorization. Three extremely different characters: a knight possessed by jealousy; a girl caught up in religious and political intrigue, who loses her senses at the thought of her fiancé’s supposed unfaithfulness; and a barber motivated by a psychopathic lust for revenge. But nonetheless, the idea – from a musical standpoint quite awkward – to combine Händel’s Orlando, Bellini’s I Puritani and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd turned out to be considerably more coherent than in the case of last year’s series ‘Liberty or Death’ series, in which Carmen played the quite far-fetched role of a unifying force for two rarely-performed Rossini operas.

This time, we decided to catch the WNO in Oxford: among other reasons, in order to ‘check out’ this ensemble in the difficult acoustic conditions of the New Theatre, about which I wrote in one of the October articles on this page. I was consumed with curiosity about how Annilese Miskimmon, the creator of an extraordinarily intelligent and precise staging of Jenůfa for the Scottish Opera, would handle the dramaturgically weak I Puritani. I was a little (well, even very!) worried about Orlando in the staging of Harry Fehr, who shifted the action of this dramma per musica into the realities of an English hospital and the time just after the outbreak of World War II. I was looking forward to Sondheim’s ‘black operetta’ – a musical at moments closer to Ravel, Prokofiev and Britten than the insipid music of big-budget Broadway productions. Frankly, I couldn’t wait for this season, because production of Baroque operas in Poland is the exclusive domain of enthusiasts associated with the historical performance movement; Bellini is avoided by our theatre directors like fire; and if anyone aside from specialists and the more refined lovers of the musical œuvre has heard of Sondheim, then it was only in the context of the film version of Sweeney directed by Tim Burton.

New Theatre Oxford turned out to be even more cramped and poorly adapted to presentations of music theatre works than we had originally thought. The hall, more capacious than Warsaw’s  Grand Theatre–National Opera, literally merges into the stage; the audience is crowded into densely-packed rows, and there is no orchestra pit. The instrumentalists occupy the space left behind by seats removed from the front portion of the ground floor, separated from the audience by a low, temporary barrier. No wonder that in the first act of I Puritani, the soloists and the orchestra were occupied, above all, with ‘catching’ the sound proportions. However, this went more smoothly than expected, for which enormous credit goes to Carlo Rizzi, who from the beginning took care not only of the work’s big picture, but also of its meticulously-executed details, chief among them a beautiful, typically bel canto-style rubato, shaped in ideal accord with the disposition of the individual singers. All the more importantly that Barry Banks, expected in the role of Arturo, was substituted at the last minute by the young Italian Alessandro Luciano, a singer gifted with a nice voice and decent technique, but clearly inexperienced and insecure in the murderously high notes that Bellini did not spare the lead tenor in this opera. Linda Richardson (Elvira), playing opposite him, came out decidedly better, though after listening to fragments of ‘Vien diletto, è in ciel la luna’ in the rendition of the phenomenal Rosa Feola from the WNO trailer, I deeply regret having happened upon the other cast for this role. Richardson’s interpretation – though correct and completely period-appropriate – was lacking in girlish lightness and the charming freedom of coloratura figures showcased by her predecessor. David Kempster took a long time to warm up in the role of Sir Riccardo, one basically inappropriate for this baritone, who reveals the fullness of his artistic values in the later Puccini and verismo repertoire. I am all the more pleased to report upon the superb debut of Wojtek Gierlach in the role of the good-hearted Sir Giorgio, singing with fluid phrasing and a soft, round color (in ‘Suoni la tromba’, he made a splendid duo with Kempster, who felt much more at home in this proto-Verdian duet). The minor deficiencies in the solo parts, however, faded into oblivion before the brilliant musical vision of Ricci, who strongly emphasized the dialogical character of I Puritani, ensuring that the singers, orchestra and chorus (outstanding as usual) built a transparent narrative and did not try to drown each other out.

I Puritani. Wojtek Gierlach (Sir Giorgio), Rosa Feola (Elvira), Sian Meinir (Enrichetta). Photo: Bill Cooper.

Miskimmon based her staging on a surprising idea: she decided to take literally Elvira’s complaint that three months of separation from her beloved are like ‘tre secoli di sospiri e di tormenti’. Similarly to Jenůfa, she shifted the action to the realities of Northern Ireland, judging from the costumes (stage design by Leslie Travers) in the 1970s, the time of Na Trioblóidí, i.e. the infamous political and ethnic Troubles. The wedding preparations play out in parallel with the organization of the Orange Order demonstration in July – an annual Protestant parade in honour of William III’s victory over the Jacobites. A sudden and stormy shift of the narrative to 1649 is the first sign of the heroine’s psychological breakdown – the two time planes, each one with every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed as always with Miskimmon, continually merge into each other. The contemporary Elvira follows her 17th-century alter ego step by step. And here the first dissonance appears: the silent twin, after a suggestive first entrance, wanders aimlessly about the stage; instead of filling in the narrative, she just disturbs it. This is nothing, however, in comparison with the solution adopted in the finale: after the breathtaking scene in which the messenger arrives with news of the amnesty (the black-and-white character enters the Orange hall like something out of a dream), Miskimmon changes the ending and gives poor Arturo over to death at the hands of the Unionists. As a consequence, Arturo disappears from the final ensemble number. I would not have suspected that such a musical stage director would permit herself to do such obvious violence to Bellini’s score – especially that her provocative vision, despite the aforementioned reservations, does actually hold together for most of the opera.

The next day, my disappointment unexpectedly turned into admiration. Harry Fehr had done the impossible: he had set the action of the ‘magical’ Orlando in a very concrete space and time, with all of the fantastic elements coming from the sickened mind of the protagonist, a heroic airman suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The director does not modernize the narrative by force – everything takes place in the meticulously-reproduced scenery of a hospital from the 1930s (stage design by Yannis Thavoris, playing wonderfully with the Art Deco-style interior of the New Theatre). There is the mentally-ill Orlando and the physically-crippled Medoro. There are two female rivals: the aristocratic Angelica and the modest, straight-laced nurse Dorinda. The strings are pulled by the demonic Zoroastro – the medical director, a peculiar cross between Mesmer and Freud, an omnipotent doctor who sets himself the goal of healing the protagonist and sending him off to battle with the enemy of the homeland. The entire concept could have fallen flat if Fehr had not worked out every detail and paced every gesture with the individual phrases of the libretto. The static narrative suddenly picked up its pace; the improbable twists in the plot gained a psychological justification. A few scenes and theatrical ideas will remain in my long-term memory: the scene where Orlando is ‘conditioned’ with the aid of slides from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s visit to Hitler in Berchtesgaden; Angelica’s emerald-green gloves in the aria ‘Verdi piante’; the daring idea of supposedly destroying Dorinda’s house as part of Orlando’s shock therapy. If we add to this the phenomenal acting of all of the singers (as well as choristers in non-speaking roles), we obtain a stage vision, the coherence of which would be appreciated from beyond the grave even by the director of (at that time) His Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket, where Orlando had its world première.

Orlando. Lawrence Zazzo. Photo: Bill Cooper.

I also will spare no compliments to the musicians. The WNO orchestra, prepared by Rinaldo Alessandrini, played in Oxford under the baton of Andrew Griffith. With a knowledge of style that not a few continental Baroque ensembles could envy it (despite the violette marine originally used in Act III being replaced by ‘ordinary’ violas). I have already written about my doubts concerning the casting of Orlando and Medoro previously – on the occasion of the Polish première of Händel’s masterpiece. My doubts have remained, especially in reference to Robin Blaze, who was not able to breathe any life into the part of Medoro, scored for female alto. Lawrence Zazzo in the role of Orlando, however, made up for all of his vocal deficiencies with wonderful scenic gesture, creating a character of flesh and blood – at moments grotesque, at moments tragic, convincing in every respect. Rebecca Evans turned out to be the brightest star of the evening: a lofty, somewhat distant Angelica, but at key moments moving one to tears – above all, by virtue of flawless technique and feel for style. Nor can one remain indifferent to the vocal art of Fflur Wyn (Dorinda), one of the most versatile light sopranos among the soloists at WNO.

It is no wonder, then, that after such experiences, I received the staging of Sweeney Todd without any great emotion. In this case, James Brining’s shifting of the action to the 1970s found no justification. The action moved quickly, images came and went as if in a kaleidoscope, but the drama of the mad barber – which is, after all, very firmly set in the realities of Victorian London – did lose credibility. Perhaps also on account of David Arnsperger, the German artist in the title role who was making his debut at the WNO, and who – to make things worse – sang in correct, but completely ‘transparent’, impersonal English. The strongest point in the cast turned out to be Scottish soprano Janis Kelly, who was sufficiently good as an actress, as well as vocally competent, to eclipse Sweeney in the role of Mrs. Lovett. There is also no way to overestimate the artistry of Paul Charles Clarke, who in an awesomely cavalier manner took on the role of Pirelli and parodied his own – otherwise splendid – technique of a lyric tenor accustomed to the Italian repertoire. I would prefer to assess the craftsmanship of the remaining soloists, especially Soraya Mari (Johanna) and Jamie Muscato (Anthony) in other conditions, without microport amplification of the singers. I shall again praise the superb work of the chorus and sensitive playing of the orchestra under the baton of James Holmes, but I cannot get rid of certain objections: since the WNO is raising Sondheim’s œuvre to the rank of a full contemporary opera (and not without reason), why is it hesitant to perform it ‘as God commanded’ – without amplification, on the natural forces of perfectly-trained vocalists?

Sweeney Todd. David Arnsperger and Janis Kelly (Mrs. Lovett) and the chorus. Photo: Johan Persson.

But now let us bring the matter back down to earth. We got three shows, sometimes controversial in terms of staging, but despite slight reservations superb from a musical standpoint. We happened upon them on tour, in immeasurably difficult acoustic conditions, in the final phases of their tour, when just plain human exhaustion could have been coming into play. I would wish for such premières at Polish opera houses. I would also wish everyone an equally friendly and objective audience.

(Translated by Cara Thornton)

Two years ago, the Longborough Festival Opera was the world’s first private opera house to present the entire Ring of the Nibelung in one season. This year, it basically began the worldwide celebration of Tristan und Isolde’s 150th birthday by giving the first presentation barely two days after the anniversary of the world première in Munich. I have written about the Grahams’ endeavour – as beautiful as it was crazy – already previously, so I shall not repeat myself. I shall only explain what drove me to Longborough, for my decision concerning the trip to see and hear that Tristan was made over a year ago, after the Warsaw première of Lohengrin. The performer of the title role, Peter Wedd, provoked mass confusion among our critics. The so-called main trend was populated by his opponents, who were trying to compare his interpretation with the supposedly obligatory model template. From several side trends, voices of admiration reverberated – more often, however, focused on the general manner of building the character than on the enormous, at that time already evident potential of this singer. Intrigued by Wedd’s extraordinary musicality and the beauty of his dark, overtone-rich tenor, I began systematic field research. With pleasure I observed how that voice grew stronger, gaining power and a peculiarly Wagnerian brilliance. I traveled to Longborough hoping that Anthony Negus had managed to fill in the rest of the cast with equal sensitivity, work out a convincing concept for the whole and clothe it in an appropriate sound. Reality exceeded my boldest expectations.

And it had seemed to me that those expectations were, even so, excessive. The stage at Longborough resembles that of a second-rate cinema out in the middle of nowhere. No sophisticated acoustical paneling: spread over the audience’s heads is a roof of corrugated metal supported on wooden rafters. The orchestra pit – as in Bayreuth – is deep and placed almost entirely beneath the stage. The singers follow the conductor’s movements on black-and-white monitor screens hung on the walls of the side loggias. To organize that microscopic stage space, one must have truly enormous imagination, intuition and good taste. All of these things were present, especially in the stage designer (Kimie Nakano) and the lighting director (Ben Ormerod), who put us into the mood of the Tristan myth with a spectacular play of colors and contrast, almost entirely abandoning scenery and superfluous props. Their vision, on the one hand, brought to mind associations with Japanese Nō theatre, where the actors move about an empty stage; and on the other, with Wieland Wagner’s legendary second staging from Bayreuth (1962) – especially in Act III, where a characteristic ‘Celtic’ monolith with a round opening in its upper portion appeared at the back of the stage. Japanese inspirations were also evident in the cut and colors of the costumes, loosely modeled on court attire and warriors’ clothing (Tristan appeared in something resembling a shinobi shōzoku, the traditional clothing of Japanese ninjas). Stage director Carmen Jakobi filled in the whole with economical, indeed ascetic acting gesture, so I have no idea what tempted her, at key moments in the drama (among others, during the love duet from the second act and in Tristan’s death scene), to introduce two dancers, otherwise fantastic, who were supposed to reflect the characters’ ‘Jungian’ subconscious. First of all, this is a solution of a completely different order – for choreographer Didy Veldman appealed not only to Jung, but also to the erotic bas-reliefs from Khajuraho – and secondly, the dance distracted one’s attention from the considerably more interesting symbols contained in Wagner’s music itself. I must admit, however, that in comparison with the visions of Polish stage directors, with their ubiquitous parades of little girls without matches and little boys with gramophones, Katie Lusby and Mbulelo Ndabeni created only a minor dissonance with the rest of this deeply thoughtful staging.

Photo: Matthew Williams Ellis

This is nothing, however, in comparison with the brilliant coherence of Anthony Negus’ musical concept. My fears that the orchestra’s sound would not find its way through the narrow throat of the pit, but rather disappear into the abyss beneath the stage, were dispelled already in the second measure of the prelude, where the legendary Tristan chord appears for the first time. When Tristan’s ’cello motif merged with the oboe wistful Liebeslust theme, I gained certainty that this true master of the baton would balance the proportions even in such Spartan conditions. Even if one felt a certain dissatisfaction with the volume of the strings (Negus was conducting a relatively small ensemble, comprising a total of 61 instrumentalists, distributed about the pit in a German-style arrangement), he more than made up for it with the exceptional beauty of their sound. In terms of style, Negus’ craft can be compared with the most brilliant interpretations of Karl Böhm – and here, I do not at all have in mind barren imitation, but rather an aptness of interpretation flowing from knowledge of the deepest kind. This Tristan pressed on inexorably toward the final ecstasy of the Liebestod, moving forward in strong tempi, energetically, passionately, retaining proper proportions between longing, sensuality and desire for ultimate fulfillment. On the one hand, Negus made ideal use of harmonic (vertical) features; and on the other, he ingeniously impinged upon them with melodic thinking, whereby he built tension so effectively that sometimes this Wagner was no less than painful. Let us add to this a watchmaker’s attention to detail, and we shall find ourselves in seventh heaven.

Over the past year, Wedd’s voice has gone through a metamorphosis surprising even to the careful observer. It has taken on a yet darker colour (in the lower register, it sounded more baritone-like than the singing of Kurwenal), while at the same time retaining ecstatic ardour and heartbreaking lyricism which inclines one to comparisons with the achievements of Max Lorenz at the peak of his career. Aside from this, the singer is tireless: only the greatest masters are able to retain such power of expression and depth of interpretation during Tristan’s death scene. Rachel Nicholls took her first steps as a Bach and Handel soprano; after that, she had the good fortune to come across Anne Evans, who opened up her voice to repertoire of heavier caliber. For Wedd, she turned out to be the ideal partner: physically delicate, almost girlish, but at the same time, warm, passionate, full of emotions brought out by flawless intonation and a perfect feel for phrasing. If it were possible to fault her for anything at all, it would be a not-quite-complete immersion in the role of Isolde, though I am convinced that this, too, will come with time. Nearly all of the other soloists created memorable characters: from the broken King Marke (Frode Olsen); to the distinctive, psychologically complex Brangäne (Catherine Carby) and the touchingly devoted Kurwenal, trying to maintain optimism until the very end (Stuart Pendred); to the episodic roles of Melot (Ben Thapa), the Shepherd (Stephen Rooke), the Young Sailor (Edward Hughes) and the Steersman (Thomas Colwell).

Photo: Matthew Williams Ellis

In this production, there were several moments of unearthly beauty. First of all, the finale of Act II, in which Frode Olsen – in collaboration with the phenomenal Kate Romano (bass clarinet) – brought us to our knees with the heartbreaking monologue of King Marke, the drama’s most tragic character, a dignified ruler who (unlike the two protagonists) does not manage to come over to the other side and experience ‘the thing in itself’ – a lament sung with surpassing beauty, in an old, breaking voice, but for all that with improbable power of expression. Secondly, the ideal blending of the lovers in the passage from the earlier love duet when Isolde and Tristan sang ‘Wonne-hehrstes Weben, liebe-heiligstes Leben’ as a single being overcome by ecstasy, almost inaudibly opening the phrase just a little bit, opening it up wide, and then closing it without slamming the door. Thirdly, ‘Muss ich dich so versteh’n’ in Tristan’s death scene, which would move an entire avalanche of stones to tears. And finally, the Liebestod, after which ensued a deathly silence, preceding a veritable storm of applause. Enough to remember this production for the rest of one’s life.

Though British critics – spoilt by productions at the Royal Opera House and on the country’s other leading stages – grumbled about the staging, everyone was agreed in their enchantment with the musical side of the Longborough Tristan. Jessica Duchen, who a month before the première expressed herself concerning the Longborough enthusiasts in a quite protectionist tone, was later not able to find words to express her admiration. It will suffice to mention that Duchen is going to the July production in Bayreuth and has serious doubts whether the team under Thielemann’s baton, with Stephen Gould and Anja Kampe in the cast, will be able to achieve the level to which the modest musicians from a provincial opera house in Gloucestershire were able to rise. She supplied her passionate review for the Independent with the following long and characteristic title: Excuse me, but why isn’t this man conducting Wagner at Covent Garden and Bayreuth?

Photo: Matthew Williams Ellis

Indeed – why? Perhaps Peter Wedd – with whom I talked the next day – is right when he comments upon this strange situation with a quote from a quatrain by William Blake: ‘When Nations grow Old, the Arts grow Cold, and Commerce settles on every Tree’. Here in Poland, they froze solid already a long time ago. I myself know conductors whose knowledge and sensitivity continue to escape the notice of Polish opera house directors. Maybe it is time to go out to the country, look for some abandoned chicken farm and start over again from scratch?

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski