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I have recently extracted from the depth of my archive an essay on the dilemmas of a critic who sometimes dreams of going to the opera just for pleasure, in nice company, of not analysing every element of the work done on stage and, finally, of simply listening to the music. I wanted it and I got it. Between two Very Serious Jobs I received a proposal from a music loving friend of mine to pop over to Munich for a few days and see two performances at the Bayerische Staatsoper. The trip turned out to be wonderfully successful: excellent company, beautiful weather, very decent performances – at times even dazzling in musical terms. I initially thought about summing up this trip with a short summer post, but the unrelenting critical mechanism made its presence felt already during the first evening. I decided to feed the demon of compulsion – perhaps it is already too late to change certain habits.

I planned to see Rusalka, which had been present in the company’s repertoire for nearly eleven years, and a new production of Braunfels’ Die Vögel, marking the centenary of the Munich premiere, even before the pandemic. And then I forgot all about it. Maybe it is a good thing that someone made the decision for me, because in this way I could compare two extremely different proposals of Regietheater, in which the supposedly autonomous author of the stage vision enters into a risky dialogue with the text. The problem, missed by a majority of the autonomous directors fiddling around with opera, is that there are at least two parallel texts in this form – the score and the libretto. A wise dispute with both hardly ever happens. The text “overwritten” by the director is rarely an added value. However, there are stagings in which audiences do nevertheless get seduced by a strange story The key to an ambiguous success of such productions is cold precision and iron consistency in rule breaking. Something will always fall through, because operatic texts are exceptionally resistant to deconstruction. This does not change the fact that if I’m moved by something in such a staging, I must admit it.

Rusalka in Munich. Photo: Wilfried Hösl

This was the case of Rusalka as presented by Martin Kušej – a production that will be easy to date even a hundred years from now. The Austrian director began to work on Dvořák’s masterpiece, when the world was engrossed in the case of Joseph Fritzl, which in March 2009 ended with Fritzl being convicted of murder, multiple rapes, paedophilia, incest, imprisonment and enslavement. The unimaginable nightmare of Elisabeth, Fritzl’s daughter and mother of his seven children, lasted over thirty years. For nearly a quarter of a century it unfolded underground, in the cellar of the house in Amstetten, in close proximity to Rosemarie Fritzl, Joseph’s wife and Elisabeth’s mother, who was allegedly unaware of what was going on. It is not for me to reveal the winding paths Kušej’s mind followed to make a connection between this story and a poetic tale of a clash of two world orders and love, of barren pain and vain sacrifices which Vodnik wanted to spare his beloved daughter Rusalka. Yet there are hardly any weak points in the narrative imposed on Dvořák by Kušej. Ježibaba sits half-dazed on the first floor, against a massive wallpaper with a picture of Lake Mondsee, where the “real” wife of Fritzl once ran an inn. Beneath the floor lurks the dark abyss of the cellar, where Vodnik imprisons his victims. It is not difficult to work out that the ghastly polonaise of the brides hugging skinned doe is a nightmare of Elisabeth – being raped, miscarrying and losing her newborn baby after a few days. It is hard to imagine a blunter and more coherent theatrical vision of the Stockholm syndrome – complete helplessness resulting in the victims’ animal-like attachment to their abusers.

Günther Groissböck (Vodnik) and Kristine Opolais (Rusalka). Photo: Wilfried Hösl

Kušej raped Rusalka, he imprisoned her in the cellar of his own imagination: so effectively, in fact, that at times the operatic text began to pity him. It is impossible to watch it calmly, impossible to consent to it and yet there is no denying that the director is a master when it comes to creating his characters and formulating the general framework of his concept. At least we have room for a dispute, room for sharp disagreement. Nothing of the sort remains after a performance of Die Vögel as presented by Frank Castorf, once a prophet of German political theatre, today a worn-out scandaliser, provocateur, who has gone so far in his contempt for texts that he no longer wants – or is unable – to put together a convincing whole from the shattered remains of the narrative.

The premiere seemed ill-fated from the start. The director, who had called for a “civic rebellion” against the pandemic-related restrictions, and shouted in interviews that he would not be taught by that Merkel woman how to wash his hands, had to share his work in a strict lockdown: with an audience of fifty people, who after the first performance neither burst into rapturous applause, nor dared to boo. Castorf did not expect this, used as he is to strong reactions. The staging, available as a stream for some time, has only now gone through a trial by fire in front of a still limited audience. I suspect it has disappointed everyone. For it has so much of everything that it really has nothing. In a sense it can be seen as a museum of the now outdated art of the erstwhile restorer of the Volksbühne. We have a revolving stage and structural elements seen in the infamous Bayreuth Ring. We have containers and other cramped interiors, filmed, as usual, by two cameras, which enable the audience to see what goes on inside. There is chaos so beloved by the director. What is missing, however, is substance, even pointless substance.

Die Vögel. Photo: Wilfried Hösl

And I wanted to argue with Castorf so much. I was wrong when I suspected that he would transform Braunfels’ very loose adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy – with its bitter-sweet finale, so typical of other German works from that period – into a sharp social satire. Instead, Castorf prevented me from entering into any discussion, as he used in his staging of Die Vögel free, schizophrenic even, associations. If there are birds, then we must have Hitchcock or a poster for a concert by The Byrds. If there is Prometheus, he has to be dressed as Karl Marx. Something going not quite right in the birds’ realm? It is a certain sign that Ratefreund and Hoffegut should put on SS uniforms. I have to admit that I still have not figured out why Castorf decided to blight the stage with a huge copy of Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. Perhaps the only reason is that the original can be admired in Munich’s Pinakothek.

Caroline Wettergreen (Nachtigall). Photo: Wilfried Hösl

During my first evening in Munich I saw a beautiful theatrical catastrophe, during the second – a catastrophe that was hideous as much as it was dead boring. Fortunately, the Bavarian Opera is one of the few opera houses in Europe, where at least the musical side of productions gives no cause for concern. Both Robert Jindra in Rusalka and Ingo Metzmacher in Die Vögel  led the Staatsoper forces in calm, measured tempi, brilliantly highlighting the vivid sound of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. I still hear the painfully inevitable finale of Dvořák’s opera, rolling like black water. I did not expect that the duet between the Nachtigall (excellent Caroline Wettergreen) and Hoffegut er reliable Charles Workman) from the second act of Die Vögel under Metzmacher’s relaxed, unhurried baton would reveal so many similarities with not just Ariadne auf Naxos and Tristan, fairly obvious in this context, but also with the shimmering texture of Berlioz’s scores. I heard several outstanding singers, primarily Wolfgang Koch as Prometheus in Braunfels’ opera, a singer consolidating his position as one of the leading dramatic baritones today; Kristine Opolais (Rusalka), who is paying a high price for overusing her voice in the past, but manages it so wisely that she is able to hide signs of wear and tear; and Günther Groissböck, who once again shook me in his Vodnik’s monologue from Act II. I experienced a moment of true rapture thanks to a long-awaited, nearly perfect interpreter of the Prince in the form of Dmytro Popov, a singer with a ravishing, thick and dark tenor, phenomenal breath support and sensitivity which is unusual in such a young singer.

So much musical happiness over two short days of summer holidays – if it had happened two years ago, I would be already making plans for the next season. Now each decision will have to be thought over three times, and information will have to be looked for not on agents’ websites or Operabase, but in tweets and Facebook posts. One has to get used to it. What is meant to be is already here, only we refuse to acknowledge it.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

“Not until the turn of the century did the outlines of the new world discovered in Tristan begin to take shape. Music reacted to it as a human body to an injected serum, which it at first strives to exclude as a poison, and only afterwards learns to accept as necessary and even wholesome,” wrote Paul Hindemith in 1937 in the first volume of his textbook The Craft of Musical Composition (trans. Arthur Mendel). A sea of ink has already been used to describe the novelty of Wagner’s masterpiece – suffice it to say that the prelude to Act I stunned no less a figure than Hector Berlioz. Yet whenever the word intimacy is mentioned with reference to the work, some cannot help rolling their eyes. Everything seems to suggest they are right: large forces needed to perform the piece, the longest love duet in the history of the genre or the dying protagonist’s monologue that last half of Act III.  However, the essence is not in the size but in the violent accumulation of emotions – in what is the most profound and the most intense and thus the most strongly linked to the experience of true closeness. Over the last few seasons there have been several significant attempts to turn Tristan into a chamber piece, at least in its interpretative dimension: by lightening up the orchestral textures and encouraging the singers to make their characters psychologically credible. Musicians’ efforts were not always matched by those of the directors wavering between asceticism in their staging and the temptation to heap upon it a whole range of unjustified symbols and references.

Günther Groissböck’s directorial debut announced before the pandemic piqued my curiosity even more so given the fact that by definition, as it were, it excluded an “excessive” approach to Tristan und Isolde. The venture – laudably and honestly termed Tristan Experiment – was planned in the tiny interior of Vienna’s Kammeroper operating under the auspices of the Theater an der Wien. The same theatre where Krystian Lada staged Vivaldi’s Bajazet last year, shortly before another closure of most European opera houses. Its stage is the size of a narrow platform in a cinema, the auditorium has fewer than three hundred seats and the orchestra pit can accommodate more or less one-fourth of the forces intended by Wagner.

I arrived in Vienna after the premiere, having already heard that Matthias Wegele had devised a chamber version of Tristan for just 21 musicians and that in Groissböck’s concept the eponymous protagonists were taking part in a mysterious experiment – medical? psychiatric? – which took a turn quite unexpected by its supervisors and participants. I became truly intrigued by the former: I had already encountered examples of remarkably successful reductions of Wagnerian scores and begun to pursue them as valuable in themselves. I decided to see the director’s vision with an open mind. It is one thing to have the French straitjacketing characters from Russian operas and another to have an Austrian tinkering with an opera born of Schopenhauerian pessimism and staging it in a city where Doctor Leopold von Auenbrugger treated mental disorders with orally administered camphor, Freud gorged himself on cocaine for the purpose of research and the Am Steinhof hospital became an official centre of extermination of people with disabilities during the Second World War. I expected an unconventional approach from Groissböck and I was not disappointed.

Kristiane Kaiser (Isolde) and Norbert Ernst (Tristan). Photo: Herwig Prammer

It is hard to say whether Tristan and Isolde in this version are two patients who have no recollection of their past relationship, or a couple of complete strangers in whom the staff of an experimental hospital are trying to induce passion and test its limits. It is not that important anyway: what does matter is the fact that the three researchers drive the protagonists into a state of hallucination mixed with ecstasy, revive genuine or fake memories of their love, make them identify with Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck and then lose control over them. The biggest asset of the staging is a precise distinction between the two worlds: the hospital flooded by merciless light, and the swaying “night of love”, at times blurry like a phantom, from which emerge again and again the interiors and building of the Wesendoncks’ villa in Zurich. Inconspicuous and vulnerable in their hospital gowns, Tristan and Isolde regain their dignity and sense of purpose as Mathilde and Richard. The trio of experimenters manipulating them reveal the less obvious traits of the remaining protagonists: “Doctor” Marke’s frustration that the patient fails to fulfil his research expectations; the false friendship of the character in the double role of Kurwenal and Melot; Brangäne’s naive stupidity.

The performance is a treat for the eyes thanks to the set built practically without props, but primarily with light and image (sets and costumes – Stefanie Seitz, video – Philipp Batereau, lighting design – Franz Tscheck). The theatrical gesture still needs some polishing, especially in the case of Brangäne and Kurwenal/Melot, portrayed by singers less used to the stage and, consequently, less comfortable in the microscopic Kammeroper. But before I discuss the vocal part of the venture, I would like to dwell for a moment on Wegele’s phenomenal orchestration and the cuts he made together with Groissböck.

Kristján Jóhannesson (Kurwenal) and Norbert Ernst. Photo: Herwig Prammer

Wegele did not limit himself to mechanically reducing the orchestral forces. He cut the string quintet in unevenly, leaving three instruments in the first violins, violas and cellos, two in the second violins and one double bass. He left out the percussion, harp and tuba, entrusted all wind parts to single instruments, and complemented the bass in the orchestra with the accordion, practically unrecognisable to the untrained ear. Thus he built many textures from scratch, as it were, achieving very convincing sound effects (the harp replaced by the flute and string pizzicato). Consequently, he was able to bring out from the score what can be heard in it anyway, but what often is missed by the listener: a spectral harbinger of Mahler’s symphonies, Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Zemlinsky’s rough harmonies. Some cuts in the score were questionable, however: while a smooth transition from the love potion scene to the great duet made it possible to quite convincingly link the two acts in the first part of the performance, the fact that the group scene towards the end of Act III was retained was surprising – the logic of such dramaturgy would suggest just as smooth transition from Tristan’s death to Isolde’s final monologue.

Kristiane Kaiser, Günther Groissböck (King Marke), Juliette Mars (Brangäne), Kristján Jóhannesson and Norbert Ernst. Photo: Herwig Prammer

Yet these are only quibbles, which I had to mention given the surprisingly high musical quality of the whole. Despite the reduced line-up the sound of the Wiener KammerOrchester conducted by Hartmut Keil was rounded and vivid, not for a moment suggesting that we were dealing with an “economical” version of Tristan. The title roles were entrusted to two singers with a lot of experience but not usually associated with the great Wagnerian repertoire: Kristiane Kaiser, a long-time soloist with the Volksoper Wien, an artist with a soft soprano with a lovely colour, though at times insufficiently ringing in the middle register, which suggests that she might not be able to cope with the part on a bigger stage; and Norbert Ernst, an excellent singer from Vienna. I hope with all my heart that directors of opera houses will stop pigeonholing him as a “character tenor” and make more courageous casting decisions with him in mind. He may not be a Heldentenor with the makings of a Tannhäuser, but he is certainly an extremely musical singer, with a great sense of text and rhythm of the phrase, and a ringing, thick, technically-assured voice. I hope that his Tokyo debut as Walther in Die Meistersinger will take place and will be a complete success. Groissböck was in a class of his own – also acting-wise – as the wounded King Marke: at times he just had to be careful not to blast out the tiny stage at Fleischmarkt with his powerful bass. Juliette Mars (Brangäne) was excellent as a character but slightly disappointing as a singer: her sharp, not very even mezzo-soprano sounded brighter at times than Isolde’s singing. Let us hope that Kristján Jóhannesson (Kurwenal/Melot) will soon dazzle us not only with the volume of his beautiful baritone, but also with his ability to vividly portray his characters.

I left Kammeroper, feeling that no harm had been done to Wagner. May there will be more such experiments. They may turn beneficial to the health of opera – still deep in the pandemic-induced crisis and crying over the times that will never be back.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

The hated lockdown has never been associated in Poland with what it should be associated with – a tool for fighting the pandemic in a comprehensive manner based on Erasmus’ principle that prevention is better than cure. A tool requiring integrity and consistency from governments, insight and humility in the face of the unknown from experts, and ethical sensibility, solidarity and empathy from societies. The restrictions – annoying and incomprehensible to most Poles – have proved ineffective for a variety of reasons. Instead of giving us hope, they have left us believing that they undermine our freedom, that they become an element of a ruthless political fight, that they – and not the disease – lead to thousands of human tragedies and unprecedented crisis of our healthcare system.

Above all, however, they have destroyed in us the vestiges of our already underdeveloped communal thinking – a prerequisite of survival, thanks to which the United Kingdom is now exiting from a lockdown no one in Poland can even imagine. It emerges from lockdown not only healthier and more prudent, but also equipped with a range of skills developed in the most difficult moments of isolation. I’ve been watching the Brits’ musical initiatives from the beginning of the pandemic – with growing admiration. Culture in the British Isles has not frozen even for a moment: it has simply become locked in people’s homes, connecting with the world by means of modern technology, which makes it possible not only to stay in touch with the audience, but also to continue earlier projects and make constructive plans for the future.

The fruits of such painstaking preparations include the first, still virtual, Easter Festival of the Oxford Bach Soloists – an ensemble founded in 2015 by Tom Hammond-Davies and from the very beginning operating as a musical community, bringing together renowned singers and orchestral musicians, students, amateurs, educators as well as scholars representing a variety of disciplines, from history and theology to literature studies and philology. The ensemble and its boss have set a rather extraordinary goal for themselves: to present Johann Sebastian Bach’s entire vocal legacy in chronological order and in combination with the context and purpose of each work. They have planned the venture for twelve years – who knows, the seemingly lost year of the great pandemic may have equipped them with interesting tools which might be used successfully in future seasons.

Tom Hammond-Davies. Photo: Nick Rutter

The programme of this year’s festival featured Cantatas BWV 4 and BWV 31 as well as the Easter Oratorio. Yet for a variety of reasons I will focus on St John Passion, a masterpiece which for some time has been winning back the performers and listeners by storm. Hans-Georg Gadamer writes in The Relevance of the Beautiful that the phenomenon of Passion music ranges “from the highest claims of artistic, historical and musical culture to the openness of the simplest and most heartfelt human needs”. It is indeed a communal phenomenon: it explains the meaning and purpose of suffering, teaches compassion, helps carry the burden of one’s fears and misfortunes. In their remarkable undertaking the Oxford Bach Soloists managed to fulfil all the conditions detailed by Gadamer and elevate St John Passion to the rank of a powerful metaphor for the current crisis.

Both of Bach’s surviving Passions date from his late period, after he became cantor at Leipzig’s St Thomas’ Church in 1723. His predecessor there was Johannes Kuhnau, an organist and music theorist, composer of a Passion According to St. Mark which had been performed alternately during Good Friday Vespers at St. Thomas’ and St. Nicholas’ in Leipzig since 1721. As he was writing his St John Passion, Bach expected it to be performed in his own church, yet as the practice observed in Leipzig would have it, the premiere of the new passion was to take place at St Nicholas’ Church. The misunderstanding came to light just four days before the event. At the last minute the cantor had to bring together a huge vocal-instrumental ensemble featuring musicians from both churches: his new piece was larger than any previous cantatas and the Magnificat, his first significant composition for Leipzig’s main churches. Despite these perturbations Bach’s St John Passion was heard in its original version on 7 April 1724. The starting point for the libretto was the Gospel of John, to which were added individuals verses from, among others, the Brockes Passion, a popular work at the time. The inconsistencies in the text later prompted Bach to introduce a number of modifications. This may be why St John Passion has been labelled an incomplete work, interrupted in the middle of its conception.

Just how undeserved the label is can be seen in the growing number of interpretations by the most distinguished specialists in historical performance. With their own experience of last year’s “St John Passion from isolation”, the Oxford Bach Soloists decided to add another dimension to their venture, inviting Thomas Guthrie to direct it. Guthrie, an English director, singer and actor, has for years been fascinated by the idea of staging a musical work not only through a dialogue between the artists and the audience, but also in terms of communal experience – being part of the narrative of the work, experienced bodily and sensually by the performers.

Nick Pritchard as the Evangelist. Photo: Helena Cooke

Guthrie the director is like an honest and ingenuous child: he knows that miracles happen in the theatre and he knows how to convince his audience of that. In 2017 I experienced this first-hand during a performance of The Magic Flute in Longborough, when he stepped into the role of performance creator to such an extent that he directed an unexpected technical break in the first act, addressing the audience as if they were a bunch of overgrown nursery school kids: much to those kids’ delight. Guthrie once compared the expression of singers to the cry of an infant who would not rest until it had conveyed its weighty message to all those present. I didn’t expect, however, that in St John Passion inside Oxford’s Christ Church Guthrie would look at the drama of Jesus, his judges, disciples and torturers through the eyes of a precocious child who understands more from this tragedy than many adults.

This was already felt in the opening chorus “Herr, unser Herrscher”, based on musical and rhetorical antitheses and making us realise the paradox of Jesus’ glory and humiliation. In his staging Guthrie plays with literally every gesture, colour and prop. Wherever in the music we have earth and the temporal world, the image sparkles with bright colours. When Bach transports us to Heaven, Guthrie paints it using pastel, even unreal hues. Christ’s Passion is black and white, shrouded in a grey mist of pain. The masterful camerawork brings to mind associations with old painting, in which artists smuggled elements of their own world into the biblical landscape. In Guthrie’s staging our rightful companions in the Way of the Cross include microphones on sliding tripods, flashing  camera lights, clothes abandoned in the aisle and instrument cases.

Peter Harvey (Christ) and Hugh Cutting.

The director was just as meticulous in making sure that there would be inner tension between all the participants in the dramatic action, from the main characters to the individual orchestral musicians (needless to say, all involved in the performance fully respected the rules of physical distancing). The Oxford Passion is equally an open allegory and a deeply lived experience of community – with the narrated story, with the other performers, with oneself. This is hugely thanks to Nick Pritchard as the Evangelist – sung with a light and superbly articulated tenor, beautifully open in the upper register – who supported his vocal artistry with excellent acting, creating an unforgettable portrayal of a fragile, often helpless witness to a tragedy, overwhelmed with despair. Just as memorable was Peter Harvey’s Christ: subdued, bitter, fearful in the face of impending death. I think that some shortage of volume in his beautiful and technically assured voice worked fine in such a concept of the role. Alex Ashworth was a movingly human, dithering Pilate, singing with a baritone that was robust, agile and spot-on when it came intonation. Worthy of note among the other soloists were Lucy Cox with her luminous, truly joyful soprano (a riveting “Ich folge dir gleichfalls mit freudigen Schritten”), the countertenor Hugh Cutting, whose rendition of “Von den Stricken meiner Sünden” sent shivers down my spine, and, especially, the velvety-voiced Ben Davies, who impressed with his cultured singing and extraordinary sensitivity in the bass arioso “Betrachte, meine Seel, mit ängstlichem Vergnügen” from the scourging scene.

When it comes to the singing of the chorus I was impressed above all by their understanding of the text, delivered with ardour, pain and compassion, and at the same time exemplary voice projection and a touch of individuality, which I value highly in performances of Baroque music. In the instrumental ensemble every musician was in a class of his or her own. I am also full of admiration for the elegance and effectiveness of the conducting of Tom Hammond-Davies, who directed the whole performance in the rather difficult acoustic conditions of Christ Church, with the musicians placed rather untypically and widely apart at times.

I keep thinking about this Passion and constantly hope to hear it live one day performed by these artists in Guthrie’s staging: simple, economical, painfully thought-provoking. Is it really necessary to die so many times in order to finally rise from the dead? Hasn’t there been enough of this suffering?

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Last season I cried bitterly over the cancellation of Die Walküre at the Longborough Festival Opera. I expected – naïvely – that in our (not just operatic) life we would follow the famous “hammer and dance” strategy proposed by Tomas Pueyo as early as last March. According to this strategy, in the first stage we would try to suppress the epidemic as much as possible and then gradually “unfreeze” some areas of activity, introducing short lockdowns if necessary. This was to be done consistently and without any compromises: with the hope of returning to the pre-crisis era as quickly as possible. Time has shown that the model, seemingly so rational and obvious, requires cooperation on the local and international level. We now know that the cooperation has been a failure and that the various countries – for a variety of reasons among which public health was pushed aside with priority being given to the interests of some groups within society – have implemented their own “strategies” often standing in stark contrast with the latest information about the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

I did not expect that Anthony Negus would nevertheless take the risk and set off for Australia to conduct Das Rheingold, the first part of Wagner’s Ring, for Melbourne Opera. He plucked up his courage at a point when Australia’s state of Victoria had announced victory over the virus, bringing down the level of infections to almost zero and making it possible for local institutions to take on cultural challenges unimaginable to the Europeans as yet. This is worthy of note all the more so given the fact that Melbourne Opera is an organisation which can rely on the support of only its friends and sponsors – despite its impressive history, beginning in 2002, when the company was set up thanks to the efforts of individuals like Zelman Cowen, expert on constitutional law of the Commonwealth and former Governor-General of Australia; Richard Divall, a pupil of Harnoucourt, Mackerras and Goodall, music director of the hugely successful 1987 Sydney Alcina with Joan Sutherland as well as earlier performances of Lohengrin and Les Troyens at the Victoria State Opera featuring the phenomenal Alberto Remedios; Sir Rupert Hammer, member of the Australian Liberal Party; and Joan Sutherland herself. In 2018 Rossini’s Otello was directed for Melbourne Opera by Bruce Beresford, the director of Driving Miss Daisy, a film that was popular in Poland as well.

At the entrance to the Regent Theatre. Photo: Melbourne Opera

If we add to that the Richard Divall Emerging Artists Programme, established less than three years ago to support the professional careers of the most talented local singers, Melbourne Opera can aspire to be called one of Australia’s most thriving operatic institutions. Most of the company’s activities focus on the Melbourne Athenaeum, a building erected in 1839 and altered many times since. The recent premiere of Das Rheingold was presented across the street, at the Regent Theatre, where in 1929 the most impressive picture palace in the state’s capital was opened, boasting over three thousand seats, a Wurlitzer organ, a Neo-Gothic lobby, a Louis XVI-style auditorium and a Neo-Baroque “Spanish” ballroom. In April 2019 a major renovation of the building began and was completed in January 2020.

Soon after the re-opening with the famous production of War Horse from London’s Royal National Theatre – the first stage production in the ninety-year history of the Regent Theatre – the building had to close its doors because of the attack of the COVID-19 virus. When the pandemic was suppressed, the theatre reopened again with a production of Das Rheingold, a prologue to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, initially planned for mid-2020 and eventually premiered on 3 February 2021. Everything went according to plan, although almost till the very last moment Negus had to take into account the possibility of not being able to leave the United Kingdom and having to pass the baton to David Kram, who had conducted a production of Tannhäuser in Melbourne. And so, almost imperceptibly to European opera fans, a breakthrough in “pandemic” Wagner performances took place. A privately funded company presented the world’s first pandemic staging of Wagner’s opera and at the same time a foretaste of the entire Ring, which should be presented in Melbourne in 2023.

Rebbecca Rashleigh (Woglinde), Louise Keast (Wellgunde), Simon Meadows (Alberich), Karen van Spall (Flosshilde), and Strange Fruit Performers Emily Ryan and Lily Paskas Goodfellow. Photo: Robin Halls

How Das Rheingold sounds under Negus’ inspired direction was something I could experience already in 2019 in Longborough. I did not expect that Melbourne Opera would decide, on the spur of the moment, to stream the last performance. When it did, I jumped at the opportunity fully aware that Negus was working in Australia in conditions less favourable than at the LFO: without an orchestra pit, with some musicians placed in the stalls of the Regent Theatre, with a cast made up largely of young singers not necessarily experienced as Wagnerians, with a staging put together on a shoestring and in accordance with the aesthetics of the earlier productions by Suzanne Chaundy, who has collaborated with Melbourne Opera on a majority of its project in recent years.

The result exceeded my wildest expectations. Negus’ interpretation has settled and despite some shortcomings in the orchestra it has become even more distinctive. For Negus the key to Wagner’s narrative is pulse –incessant, permeating each phrase, turning all, including the smallest, elements of the macroform into a whole. The “music of the beginning” praised by Thomas Mann begins to sway already in the first bars of the prelude, polished intricately in every instrument part separately only to gradually pile up in a relentless mass of successive passages and then subside like a dead wave, giving way to Woglinde’s first phrase “Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle”. Negus chisels the various leitmotifs confidently: he doesn’t shy away from seemingly excessive roughness of the structure heralding the coming of the giants or from the intense lyricism of the musical symbol of the curse of love, or the ecstatic energy of the rainbow motif. Everything in this score breathes, laughs, cries, calls for help and mercy, and tells the story so swiftly that in the final procession of the gods we can already hear echoes of the following parts of the Ring. The unassuming master of Longborough possesses a skill which eludes a majority of today’s Wagner conductors: he gives formal cohesion to what otherwise would be only a formless stream of musical events.

James Egglestone (Loge), Lee Abrahmsen (Freia), Jason Wasley (Froh), Eddie Muliaumaseali’i (Wotan), Sarah Sweeting (Fricka), and Darcy Carroll (Donner). Photo: Robin Halls

No wonder that in such a narrative the soloists moved with an assurance of stage actors, portraying their characters with full commitment and conviction. It is hard to assess the skills of the various singers on the basis of the imperfect streaming quality. Yet I wouldn’t hesitate to say that there were virtually no weak links in the cast of the Australian Rheingold, with several artists managing to create outstanding interpretations. This applies particularly to Simon Meadows’ Alberich, Shakespearean in his tragedy; James Egglestone’s Loge, seductive in his cunning and dangerous charm; and Lee Abrahmsen’s movingly vulnerable Freia. Suzanne Chaundy provided the whole with a rather conventional though at times striking stage setting – in terms of theatrical imagination, however, it was inferior to the modernist simplicity I got used to during my annual visits to Longborough.

I watched the streaming… and I grieved even more, as Norwid writes in his poem „My song”. In order for Wagner to return to European stages in full glory, we need governments as wise and indomitable as that of Australia, which is fighting the pandemic by means of the model “hammer and dance” strategy. A few days after the last performance in Melbourne and slightly more than a week before a performance in Bendigo, the state of Victoria announced another strict and short lockdown – after  only thirteen (!) new cases had been diagnosed. Hopefully by Wednesday the restrictions will be lifted and everything will get back to normal. I’m quite seriously considering a trip to Melbourne to see the entire Ring des Nibelungen in 2023. I’m afraid that Negus’ Australian venture has more chances of success than the Longborough Ring planned for the following year. Would that I were wrong this time!

Translated by: Anna Kijak

There used to be an inn here, called The White Ox, set up by shepherds and cattle traders by the tollgates of Vienna. In 1762 Leopold Mozart checked in here – on his first tour with his two child prodigies: daughter Nannerl and six-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus. In the 1820s the inn was turned into an elegant restaurant and hotel, Zur Stadt London. There was also a fast coach station, from which Frédéric Chopin set off on his journey to Prague on 19 August 1829 at ten o’clock sharp. “I have already packed my sack, I just have to go to Haslinger, and from there to the café opposite the theatre, where I will find Gyrowetz, Lachner, Kreutzer, Seyfried, etc. In two nights and one day we will be in Prague; at 9 o’clock in the evening we will take the Eilwagen. It will be a lovely journey, lovely company,” Chopin wrote that day at dawn in a letter to Feliks Wodziński.

Other celebrities who stayed at the Zur Stadt London hotel, also known as Hôtel de Londres, included Friedrich Nietzche, Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In 1848 Robert Blum, a radical German poet who was opposed to the partitions of Poland and who wrote a play about Tadeusz Kościuszko, was arrested there. Towards the end of the century the property passed to a new owner, who constructed a new building, the Rabl Hotel, combining elements of Art Nouveau with the Neo-Baroque style. It was erected in 1902 according to a design by Carl Caufal, a fashionable architect at the time. Eight years later the hotel was acquired by the thriving Český dům cooperative and became the centre of the Czech community in Vienna. Leoš Janáček stayed at the hotel during the preparations for the Viennese premiere of Jenufa in 1918. A theatre, a choral society and the Lower Austrian branch of the Sokol Gymnastic Union were based there as well. Performances and concerts were held in a small ballroom located in the side wing.

So much history and yet the place is still so inconspicuous. The façade of the building, which has housed Hotel Post since 1942, is easy to miss among the tightly spaced buildings of Fleischmarkt. In the mid-20th century Wiener Kammeroper, established shortly after the war by the Hungarian-Austrian conductor Hans Gabor, found home here after numerous twists and turns. Exactly eight years ago the company was taken over by Theater an der Wien. A group of young artists, the Junges Ensemble, began to present performances in a small hall adjacent to the hotel, trying their hand not only at Baroque and contemporary operas, but also at intimate adaptations of masterpieces from the core repertoire. Nobody could predict that in 2020 the Kammeroper would turn from a kind of opera studio into a melting pot brimming with ideas – an experimental laboratory for solutions to overcome the crisis that has painfully affected the entire music sector and will not let go.

Miriam Kutrowatz (Idaspe). Photo: Eriks Bozis

Those who were lucky enough to get tickets for the September premiere of Vivaldi’s Bajazet – less than one hundred and fifty people, because half the seats in the auditorium had to be empty – stood in a side street, wistfully looking through the window at the closed theatre café. When the door finally opened, they quickly put on their masks and staggered inside to take their seats and shake off the evening chill. At first no one paid attention to an inconspicuous bespectacled man who was bustling around, bringing more and more props, then testing their acoustic properties with a smile on his face. After a while the spectators began to realise that the man was preparing a recording studio on stage. A few minutes passed. The mysterious bespectacled man brought the last object from the wings: an old-fashioned reel of tape. He crouched down on the proscenium and put it in the orchestra pit. At that moment the sounds of the Italian overture burst out from the depths. Played live, of course. Only then did everyone understand that the new production directed by Krystian Lada started before the opera itself. In a moment we were to find out that the inconspicuous man on stage could also be the cruel Tamerlano.

Last year, when I nominated Lada for the Passport Award of the Polityka weekly, I was not sure yet whether I wanted to give the award to a director and dramaturge or an opera activist. I believed that it was reasonable to nominate Lada, considering his belief in the vivacity of the form, his conviction that the opera speaking the language of a modern theatre would touch the hearts of the audience as authentically as a good movie or a novel, his courage in presenting the burning issues of today’s world on stage. This Warsaw-born young artist who now lives in Belgium found his way into opera via a route that was completely different from that of most Polish directors. He studied abroad: literary studies and dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam. He was not yet thirty when he became director for dramaturgy and cultural promotion at La Monnaie. He worked as a journalist and editor. He wrote librettos, stage adaptations of literature and scripts for television programmes. He polished his skills as a dramaturge under the watchful eye of the best in the field, including Ivo van Hove and Pierre Audi. He participated in the Young Talents programme of the ENOA (European Network of Opera Academies). He was a member of the advisory team at Opera Europa, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation bringing together European opera houses and festivals. Three years ago he founded The Airport Society: an association of artists and activists who explore the subtle network of connections between contemporary opera, and the world of technology and the reality of current social phenomena. It was with this group that he made his debut as a director: with the performance Aria di Potenza, in which he highlighted the “operatic” aspect of politicians’ speeches, juxtaposing them with famous arias.

He attracted my attention shortly afterwards, in 2018, when he directed Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Wrocław Opera. I realised during the pre-premiere interview that I was dealing with a sensitive and modern-thinking “theatre animal” rather than yet another arrogant progressive who had forced his way onto the opera stage. Lada carefully picked out the tropes contained in the musical text and tried to present them using the language of contemporary theatre. What’s more, he demonstrated that he had a sense of humour: in the Wrocław production he had the belligerent Capulets wear the Fowler Brotherhood’s uniforms and invited a delegation of Brotherhood members to the premiere. They came dressed in full fig and would not stop admiring the director’s concept.

Miriam Kutrowatz, Sofia Vinnik (Asteria), Rafał Tomkiewicz (Tamerlano), and Valentina Petraeva (Irene). Photo: Eriks Bozis

Since then Lada has been involved in several extremely different projects – from the monumental open-air Nabucco in Wrocław, through the shocking installation Unknown, I live with you in the former chapel of the Bridgettines in Brussels, featuring music by Katarzyna Głowicka and drawing on the poetry of the participants in the Afghan Women Writing Project – I wrote about the performance later that people cried, covered their eyes and then returned to watch and hear it all again – to Rossini’s Sigismondo at the Opera Rara festival in Kraków, where Lada brilliantly combined the musical narrative with references to Matejko’s historical paintings.

He directed the Viennese Bajazet in a similar spirit: half-joking and half-scary. This three-act opera, composed in 1735 for the opening of the Verona carnival, is really hard to grasp. In addition, in cannot in all honesty be called a work by Vivaldi, because it is an example of the pasticcio, a fashionable genre in those days, in which musical sections from operas by different composers were combined to create a new story with a completely new libretto. The complicated story of the Ottoman sultan Bajazet and his daughter Asteria held captive by Tamerlano, the ruler of the Uzbek Turks, was compiled by Vivaldi in a quite twisted manner. He himself wrote arias for the “good” characters and when it came to the villains he used music written by other composers: Giacomelli, Hasse and Broschi – perhaps to emphasise mischievously who really knew his musical métier.

Lada drew upon the ancient “theatre within theatre” convention, placing the action of the opera in a studio whose owner –Tamerlano, unsurprisingly – is making a radio drama about Bajazet. On a bright, almost empty stage (with just recording equipment and props for sound effects –  excellent set design by Didzis Jaunzems) – the drama unfolds with the actors not so much portraying their protagonists, but revealing, unintentionally and often against their will, their own identity, surprisingly similar to that of characters they play. It is basically a production about the power of conventions, stereotypes and ordinary human prejudices. It is not the “stranger”, the awe-inspiring Bajazet (Icelandic baritone Kristján Jóhannesson), but the inconspicuous Tamerlano (countertenor Rafał Tomkiewicz displaying excellent acting and vocal skills) who turns out to be a real villain. Tamerlano’s metamorphosis in the finale and the far-fetched happy ending concocted by the librettist have all the features of the grotesque. Only the “good” Idaspe (played by the phenomenal young Viennese singer Miriam Kutrowatz) – a friend of the “bad guy” Andronicus – remains a mystery until the very end. He observes the events from a distance and manipulates everyone at the same time. Is he a sound director responsible for the entire broadcast? An omniscient narrator? A sexless, emotionless spectre functioning on the fringes of human existence?

Valentina Petraeva, Rafał Tomkiewicz, Sofia Vinnik and Kristján Jóhannesson (Bajazet). Photo:Herwig Prammer

Some of Lada’s ideas seem to be almost over the top – like the partially animated projections of the wild fantasies of Tamerlano and his henchmen. Yet there are a few things that redeem them easily: the consistency of the overall concept, the perfect cooperation with the rest of the team, especially with Natalia Kitamikado, the designer of visually sophisticated costumes, and, last but not least, the fact that Lada understands the specificity of the opera form. He doesn’t content himself with adoring its allegedly old-fashioned and exotic beauty. He can talk to this beauty in her mother tongue.

The Bach Consort Wien was conducted in the Viennese Bajazet by the singer and conductor Roger Díaz-Cajamarca, who led the ensemble with energy and enthusiasm, though perhaps not very subtly. Fortunately, the singers could again rely on the director, who is well-versed in music. Lada knows how to place accents in a Baroque da capo aria, when to encourage singers to improvise, and when to restrain their ideas, whether to leave them empty-handed or, on the contrary, to give them lots of props so that they can focus on what they should focus.

If this season at Theater an der Wien passes without any major obstacles, can be looking forward to other surprises on the microscopic stage at the Fleischmarkt, including an intimate adaptation of Tristan and Isolde, which will be the directorial debut of the Wiener Staatsoper star, the bass Günther Groissböck. There are no stars at the Kammeroper. There are people young in age and spirit who want not to revive opera after the pandemic, but to keep it alive now – with a great deal of love and very little money.

Every Viennese knows the song about the “dear Augustin”, a street musician who during the Black Death plague of 1679 got drunk, blacked out, spent all night in a pit with dead bodies, and survived. Not everyone draws the right conclusions from the story – it is not a parable about artists being immortal. It is a song about the hope that someone will get them out of that lime pit. Krystian Lada and the young Theater an der Wien artists are certainly worthy of it.

Translated by: Ilona Duchnovic
Original article available at: https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/nowa-odsiecz-wiedenska-165412