Posts in English

I think I’ve waited too long with my report on this year’s MusikFest Berlin. I spent whole September, travelling between Warsaw, Berlin, Bayreuth and Vienna – and when I finally collected my thoughts, Europe found itself facing another lockdown. In Poland the situation is looking particularly dramatic: opera houses and concert halls are desperately trying to hold the events programmed for the season, but everything is hanging by a thread owing to a lack of big guns, i.e. tests, which enable artistic institutions to function relatively smoothly.  We have lost control over the pandemic. Weapons will soon be lacking and we won’t be able to cope.

That Polish musical life would be restarted with such huge support of the authorities, with such extensive security measures and – perhaps most importantly – with such a sense of joint civic responsibility as in Berlin was not something I dreamed about even for a moment. However, when I shared my impressions of that first trip, I expected at least some words of admiration for the foresight of the German organisers. Nothing of the sort happened – the predominant comments were along the lines of how terrible all this was, it’s impossible to work in such conditions and music would never recover from this disaster.

Yet at the Berliner Philharmonie the atmosphere was solemn, to say the least – despite the fact that the number of people allowed in the Grosser Saal, where all MusikFest concerts had been transferred, was the same as the number currently allowed at events in the red zone in Poland. And that was not all: the entire building was divided into six separate, precisely marked sectors to keep the distance and limit contact between people to a minimum. The ushers led every listener to their place separately, making sure they would fill in the location card. Concerts lasted about an hour, without any interval. The bookshop was closed and so were the buffets. No one had to be told how to wear the face mask correctly and I saw no “welders” with visors. Thanks to the distance kept between the listeners, we could remove our face coverings, but had to put them back on again for the applause – just in case the applause was enthusiastic, as the organisers rightly predicted.

Similar restrictions were imposed on the performers. Symphony orchestras played in reduced line-ups, artists kept a distance of at least two metres, which sometimes meant that musicians had to be placed in parts of the auditorium closed to the public. No flowers, no overinflated speeches, no handshakes, not to mention hugs or selfies with fans, a ritual so popular in Poland.

Klangforum Wien and Emilio Pomàrico. Photo: Monika Karczmarczyk

Despite the fact that virtually the entire festival programme had to be turned inside out, the few surviving longer concerts divided into two shorter ones with an interval of several hours and the final evening performed twice – sparks of mutual understanding literally flew between the auditorium and the stage. The distance necessitated by the situation did not affect the quality of the performances: indeed, I can honestly assure my readers that in some cases it strengthened the overall effect. I would even go as far as to say that the pandemic MusikFest was in many respects superior to previous years’ editions.

From the festival’s surprisingly rich offering I managed to choose five items spread over seven concerts in total. I had high hopes for the extended presentation of works by Rebecca Saunders, a master of musical chiaroscuro, who puts together a shimmering mosaic out of sounds interwoven with silence. I found her extraordinarily “tangible”, undulating compositional structures much more convincing when performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik conducted by Peter Rundel, especially in the chimerical Either or for two trumpets (Marco Blaauw and Nathan Plante, premiere) and in the mysterious, tense Skin for soprano (excellent Juliet Fraser) and 13 instruments (2015/16), inspired by Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D major “Ghost”, op. 70 no. 1 and Samuel Beckett’s 1975 television play. I was less impressed by a concert featuring Klangforum Wien, despite the involvement of the phenomenal accordionist Krassimir Sterev, who brilliantly combined recitation with playing the instrument in Flesh, a piece from 2018. Perhaps the works featured in the programme “scattered” too much in the spacious interior of the Grosser Saal: Saunders’ colourful sound clouds usually sound better in a more intimate venue. It is also possible that the first part of the ensemble’s performance under Emilio Pomàrico’s baton paled in comparison with the premiere of Der Lauf des Lebens by Georges Aperghis. The French master once again wove snatches of the text (from both parts of Goethe’s Faust, delivered by six members of Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart) in the quivering instrumental fabric, in which we can hear not just jazz riffs and echoes of Franco-Flemish polyphony, but also reverberations of Bach’s passions and cantatas – for example, in the form of an amazing microtonal fugue, which emerges from silence like the apparition at the ball in Faust and demonstrates that “bent is straight, and straight not so”. When it comes to musical dialogue with the legacy of Western culture, Aperghis still has few equals.

Ensemble Musikfabrik with Juliet Fraser (soprano) and Peter Rundel (conductor). Photo: Monika Karczmarczyk

Last year I waxed lyrical about the imagination and conducting artistry of Vladimir Jurowski, author of a captivating interpretation of Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten, but bridled at the shortcomings of Anne Schwanewilms’ Empress. This time Schwanewilms did not have to cut through a massive orchestra; she was also helped by being placed on the side above the stage. She was excellent in Three Fragments from Wozzeck for soprano, orchestra and children’s choir – put together by Berg even before the premiere of the opera – especially in the moving prayer scene from the beginning of Act III, in which her voice was at last resonant and nicely rounded at the top. Applause is also due to the thirteen young singers from the Staatsoper placed above the orchestra several metres apart. Yet my deepest admiration is for Jurowski: for his excellent collaboration with the reduced RSB orchestra and very intelligent programme, which also featured Ricercar a 6 from Musikalisches Opfer in Webern’s transcription, Webern’s Variations op. 30 played with dazzling precision and, at the end, Schnittke’s Concerto grosso no. 1, a work bringing to mind a veritable whirl of associations with everything we have heard earlier, beginning with Bach’s elaborate counterpoints, through Webern’s serial patterns, to the strange similarity of mood with fragments of Wozzeck. Among the three soloists in Schnittke’s piece – Nadine Contini and Erez Ofer, and Helen Collyer on the prepared piano and harpsichord – I was impressed the most by Collyer with her unassuming simplicity of playing in the Prelude and Postlude. It takes considerable sensitivity for this compositional device not to become irritatingly banal.

I experienced different kinds of thrills during the RIAS Kammerchor’s concert conducted by Justin Doyle. The fate of the evening – owing to severe restrictions imposed on choirs – hung in the balance until the very last moment. The singers prepared a short programme ranging from pieces by Hildegard of Bingen to Caldara’s sixteen-voice Crucifixus, interspersed with Martin Baker’s organ improvisations. Given a thunderous ovation, after an encore they literally ran away from the stage in order to stay within the one-hour performance limit. It is better to play it safe – preliminary research results don’t make it possible yet to unequivocally assess the risk of pathogen transfer during choral singing.

Christian Gerhaher. Photo: Monika Karczmarczyk

The finale, featuring Berlin Philharmonic soloists, consisted of three compositions by Wolfgang Rihm, whose mature oeuvre is increasingly referred to as “new subjectivism”. The term can also be applied to a work performed that day for the first time: Stabat Mater for viola and baritone, composed in 2019 for Tabea Zimmermann and Christian Gerhaher. The intimacy of the composition has its roots in the Renaissance tradition, while its harrowing emotionality brings to mind Schubert’s Lieder. Rihm divides a mother’s grief and anger between two performers, placing the burden of the more violent emotions on the viola player – a very good choice given Zimmerman’s temperament. It would be interesting to hear the piece interpreted by other musicians one day: will there be a man who would convey the fragility of the baritone part with courage and humbleness equal to Gerhaher’s in Berlin? The evening’s programme was completed by Sphäre nach Studie for 6 instruments – a seductive composition in terms of colour, although not free from some longueurs – and the energetic, virtuosic Male über Male in the 2008 version, with the dependable Jörg Widmann playing the clarinet solo.

I returned home from the last MusikFest concert deeply convinced that only common sense could save us – that we would be able to survive the crisis thanks to the empathy and solidarity of the musical community. Today I read worrying news from all over Europe. And I still have this feeling that the Germans will make it. “What our Christmas will be like, will be decided in these coming days and weeks,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel. She didn’t have to add that this also concerned the future of music in this country. The Germans need only to be asked to behave responsibly.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

For several months I had been planning to visit Teatro Real to see the company’s production of Die Walküre, in which Günther Groissböck was to have sung the small but important role of Hunding. Shortly before the performance he disappeared from the cast, replaced by another audience’s favourite, René Pape. Soon Groissböck resurfaced elsewhere, as Ochs in a new production of Der Rosenkavalier at Berlin’s Staatsoper, where the parochial Baron auf Lerchenau was initially to have been sung by none other than… René Pape. It didn’t take me long to change my plans. Judging by the reviews of the Madrid performance, and by what I saw and heard in Berlin, both gentlemen benefitted from the change. Groissböck took the audience by storm: he once again outdid himself in a role which is gradually becoming the role of his life. Moreover, he did one hell of a job for André Heller, an omnivorous artist beloved by the Austrians, who in his long life has tackled virtually everything – cabaret song, sung poetry, organisation of mass events and spectacular exhibitions (including the fairy-tale Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Wattens, Tyrol), sculpture, set design, postage stamp design, circus art, writing, acting and God knows what else – but this was his first time directing an opera. He did create a handsome production, but it was marred by a number of sins committed by a novice who sometimes didn’t know what to do with the multitude of ideas coming to his head from all directions.

Pity, because Heller started from the right assumption: that Der Rosenkavalier was a masterful combination of irony, pastiche and travesty.  I once wrote that this comedy was worth considering in terms of an intellectual game of two titans of modernist theatre – Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal – who in an atmosphere of complete understanding mixed in it everything like in a melting pot: languages, conventions, identities of the protagonists. The librettist created a confusion of languages, having the Marschallin speak a refined German, Ochs – the Viennese dialect spiced up with pretentious macaronic terms, and the Italians – a hilariously broken vernacular. The composer played with the musical material and with the operatic convention – providing no fewer than three sopranos with many opportunities to show off, entrusting the episodic character of the Italian Singer with an arduous Mozartian aria, playing with the Viennese waltz, and shamelessly making fun of Tristan und Isolde, in which he was greatly helped by Hofmannsthal, who incorporated into his work characteristic phrases from Wagner’s drama. Both stirred things up so much that the director initially planned for the Dresden premiere had to be replaced with the experienced Max Reinhardt. A well-staged Rosenkavalier should work on several levels – a bit like Sesame Street, which can send both a kindergarten kid and a university professor into paroxysms of laughter: each for a completely different reason.

Camilla Nylund (Marschallin) and Michèle Losier (Octavian). Photo: Ruth Walz

Heller began with an elaborate trick: a made-up performance of Der Rosenkavalier of 9 February 1917 for wartime widows and orphans, with such a cast and creative team that every Strauss lover will never cease to hope to see something similar in their afterlife. A brilliantly faked poster – included in the programme and displayed on the fire curtain before Act I – featured the names of leading singers of the day; the silent roles were cast by Heller with figures like Zweig, Piccaver and Hofmannsthal himself, the musical direction was entrusted to Franz Schalk, set design – to Koloman Moser, one of the finest representatives of the Vienna Secession, and costume design – to Emilie Flöge, an extravagant fashion stylist, and Gustav Klimt’s friend and muse. Then the director decided to “reconstruct” this performance on the stage of the Staatsoper.

The idea was brilliant (some members of the audience were taken in) but difficult to put into practice, because it required artists of the same stature as in the poster. This wasn’t the case this time, although it is not entirely true of Arthur Arbesser, the Austrian master of haute-couture, who in his costumes skilfully drew on Rococo, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and dress codes of the day. Xeni Hausner, an eminent painter and experienced set designer, was less successful. The Marschallin’s Japanese-style bedroom didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the dazzling geometricism and refined colour scheme of Moser’s designs. For some reason Faninal’s residence was dominated by Klimt’s monumental Beethoven Frieze – no doubt a masterpiece, but not really in the style of a Viennese upstart merchant.  What was completely unclear was the reason behind the transfer of Act III from an out-of-town inn to a dark fin-de-siècle palm house, which disrupted not only the logic of the narrative but also the coherence of the overall aesthetic concept.

Nadine Sierra (Sophie) and Michèle Losier. Photo: Ruth Walz

Worse still, Heller – instead of guiding the actors on stage –  would again and again wink at the audience. It was to no avail, because some of his ideas were too hermetic (Klimt and Flöge among the guests at Faninal’s house), other – dubious (primarily in the finale, in which the now adult Mohammed picked up a handkerchief – dropped not by Sophie but the Marschallin – and hid it as if it were a priceless relic). The action stalled completely at times and the singers had to direct themselves. The only one who succeeded in this was Groissböck, an artist with an extraordinary sense of comedy, whose performance would surely have prompted Strauss to revert to the original title of the opera, Ochs auf Lerchenau.

The Austrian bass was without a doubt the strongest link in the cast. His soft, excellently placed voice carried above the orchestra, despite lacking somewhat in volume, impressing the audience with a faultless intonation and evenly produced sound both at the upper end of the scale and in the famous “cavernous” low notes of the broad waltz “Ohne mich”. In addition, Groissböck has at his disposal brilliant diction; he knows how to play with colours and to place accents within a phrase with the sensitivity of a seasoned actor. Camilla Nylund delivered the text much less accurately; moreover, sometimes her sensual soprano – silvery and bright at the top – lost its resonance in the middle and disappeared in the bottom register. Nevertheless, I did admire her bitter, melancholic interpretation of the monologue “Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbares Ding” from Act I. Michèle Losier, who has a distinctive and velvety-sounding mezzo-soprano, is yet to find her way in the role of Octavian – for the moment she still lets herself be carried away by emotions, which sometimes affects the precision of her singing. Nadine Sierra’s dark soprano is not quite suited to the role of the innocent Sophie in the bloom of first love, but it has to be said that the she knows how to use it and how to keep the sound consistent when singing piano – I appreciated this especially in the trio “Hab’ Mir’s gelobt”, in which all three singers displayed extraordinary musicality. Among the other soloists Katharina Kammerloher (Annina), lively and technically excellent, deserves a particularly warm mention. Praise is also due to Adrian Eröd, who stepped in at the last moment for an indisposed Roman Trekel  (Faninal), and Atalla Ayan (Italian Singer) with his secure intonation and ringing voice.

Michèle Losier and .Günther Groissböck (Ochs). Photo: Ruth Walz

Undoubtedly, I will see better productions of Der Rosenkavalier one day. Perhaps I will soon see an equally solid cast of soloists in this masterpiece. Yet I have a feeling that it won’t be any time soon – if ever – that I will hear live such a profound and thoughtful, and, at the same time, non-standard interpretation as the one presented by Zubin Mehta. The venerable maestro – once famous for his lavish, vigorous, even ruffled approach to Strauss’ music – this time celebrated the nuances of the score as if he didn’t want to part with it. Tension built up gradually and just as slowly eased; each musical structure swelled like a germinating seed, only to grow, blossom, bear fruit and fall back to the ground. Everywhere there was room for respite, for tender, even sensual collaboration with the singers, for silence and sustain, for emphasis of relations – never captured before – between instruments. This was one of the longest Rosenkavaliers I had ever heard. And I wanted it to drag on. Für alle Zeit und Ewigkeit.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Verdi had no great love for the French people, but he adored Paris. He complained about their soloists (in his opinion, the worst he had heard in his entire life), about the inferior choruses and at best average orchestras – but despite this, he spent more time in the French capital than in Rome, not only to keep an eye on production of his operas, but also to take advantage of the great city’s charms and abundant theatrical offerings. He grumbled about audience tastes and compared the operations of Parisian opera houses to soulless factories; nonetheless, he dreamed of being able to surpass Meyerbeer himself in the peculiarly French grand opéra genre. He began in the golden age of this ultra-bourgeois variant of the art: with Jérusalem, presented in 1847 in Le Peletier and constituting an adaptation of a dramma lirico from four years earlier entitled I Lombardi alla prima crociata. He made another attempt, after the February Revolution of 1848, when the monarchy under the sceptre of Louis Philippe I was replaced with a republican system. Les vêpres siciliennes, born amid suffering, reached the stage of the Paris Opera only in June 1855, during a transitory crisis in the genre. It attained great, but short-lived success. After a revival in 1863, the opera saw a mere few dozen performances in Paris, after which it disappeared from the repertoire for nearly a century. Furthermore, it returned in a somewhat later ‘export’ version with a libretto poorly translated into Italian, which premièred in December 1855 at the Teatro Regio di Parma (at that time, under the title Giovanna di Guzman). Despite sometimes superb casts and the efforts of the greatest masters of the baton, it did not enter the standard opera repertoire. A revival of the original French version took place only in 2003 at Opéra Bastille.

Since then, the Vêpres have been laboriously paving their way into the hearts of Verdi enthusiasts. Well-received in Geneva, Bilbao and Frankfurt, it met with a cool reaction after the Covent Garden première in 2013 from critics who considered it to be an internally incoherent work, full of long drawn-out bits and none-too-inspired in comparison with the masterpieces from the middle period of the composer’s œuvre. In Poland, the opera has never enjoyed popularity: presented a mere two times – in the 1870s in Warsaw and just before World War II in Poznań – it flitted briefly across the stage of Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz in 2006, in a terrible production by the Státní Opera from Prague, which quickly disappeared from music lovers’ memory. For this reason, it was without hesitation that I took off to Cardiff for the third performance after the première of the most recent staging of David Pountney, who – after productions of La forza del destino and Un ballo in maschera – decided to close off his ‘Verdi trilogy’ with Les vêpres siciliennes.

However, I did not deny myself the pleasure of acquainting myself a day earlier with a revival of Le nozze di Figaro in Tobias Richter’s staging, which had returned to the Welsh National Opera after four years – this time prepared by Max Hoehn, a young British-Swiss stage director, librettist and translator (among other things, he is working on a new translation of Così fan tutte). Judging from the progress of his career thus far, Hoehn really loves opera. Judging from what I saw in Cardiff, he has an exceptional talent for working with singing actors. Richter’s production – with its economical stage design by Ralph Koltai and, for a change of pace, splendid quasi-historical costumes by Sue Blane – hits the bull’s eye in terms of both the tastes of the local audience (which considers Le nozze – in my opinion rightly – to be one of the most wonderful, if not the greatest operatic masterpiece of all time), and the character of the work itself: a proper opera buffa with two distinctly-drawn pairs of protagonists; an array of subplots; the comic figure of the hormonally-challenged Cherubino, who is prepared to fall in love with any woman that crosses his path (OK, except maybe for Marcellina); the obligatory happy ending; and a discreet Enlightenment message about the victory of reason over the arbitrariness of authority. A message – let us add – considerably more discreet than in Beaumarchais’ work, for in Mozart’s time, opera owed its raison d’être above all to the generosity of aristocratic patrons. Hoehn brilliantly refreshed the 2016 staging, focusing all of his attention on precision of acting and clear presentation of the libretto text, from which he drew out often-omitted flavours: to this day, I burst out laughing whenever I recall the facial expression of Antonio (Laurence Cole) at the words ‘ché il cavallo io non vidi saltare di là’.

Le nozze di Figaro. Soraya Mafi (Susanna) and David Ireland (Figaro). Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Most of the cast carried out the tasks entrusted to them faultlessly, though in purely vocal terms, the one who ‘stole’ the evening from her colleagues was Soraya Mafi, a Susanna with a voice radiant as the sun, softness in the upper register and impeccable intonation. David Ireland, debuting as Figaro, gradually gained in power of conviction: his resonant and comely, but still stiffly-handled bass-baritone did not permit him to convey all the nuances of this role. Despite this, compared to them, Count and Countess Almaviva came out decidedly worse: Anita Watson, endowed with a soprano of pretty, silky timbre, had considerable difficulty with phrasing and accentuation of syllables in the recitatives; in the otherwise beautiful singing of Jonathan McGovern, there was a lack of self-confidence and perfidy-laced authority. Similar problems were encountered by Anna Harvey, who – despite possessing a sensual, distinctive mezzo-soprano simply ideal for a pants role – was unconvincing as a teenager high on testosterone. The remaining soloists displayed a superb feel for their characters and an exceptional vis comica: chief among them Harriet Eyley, a Barbarina with a voice like crystal; as well as Leah Marian Jones and Henry Waddington – a pair of experienced artists who were able to not only play Marcellina and Bartolo, but also sing them properly. A big round of applause for the choristers of the WNO – all of them together and each one individually – as well as for the dependable orchestra, which obediently realized the conductor’s concept. There is no way to deny the lightness and charm of Carlo Rizzi’s interpretation; the tempi, however, were excessively brisk, sometimes at the expense of precision in articulation, especially in the strings.

The performance of Les vêpres siciliennes the day after, under the same baton, will no doubt go down in WNO history. At the beginning, it didn’t occur to me why the audience – in this country, generally well-disciplined – did not finish up their conversations after the lights went out, and continued to check the screens of their smartphones. The first phone rang during the overture. Rizzi interrupted and shouted angrily over his shoulder, ‘Telefono!’ The next one coincided with the beginning of Vaudemont’s recitative. Before we found out ‘quelle est cette beauté’, the conductor again halted the musicians and kindly, though firmly explained to the audience why one should turn off electronic devices before the performance begins. He received a hurricane of applause. Even though a fierce match was playing out between Wales and France at the Six Nations Cup in the nearby Millennium Stadium, from this moment onward nothing interrupted the progress of the performance. No one disappeared at intermission either.

Les vêpres siciliennes. Anush Hovhannisyan (Hélène). Photo: Johan Person

The credit for this goes, among other things, to David Pountney’s coherent concept – even if regular attenders bridled at the director’s yet again shamelessly recycling his own earlier ideas, this time from the two previous parts of the ‘trilogy’. I had not seen either of them live, so I did not feel wearied by the re-utilization of elements from Raimund Bauer’s minimalist stage design – mobile black frames, alternatingly organizing the space and giving it the status of a metaphor. Pountney rightly discerned that Scribe and Duveyrier’s dramaturgically lame text does not so much tell the story of the protagonists, as evoke the ideas that occupied Verdi’s mind throughout his artistic career: the complex relations between father and son, the loneliness of the high and mighty of this world, the impossibility of reconciling human dreams of happiness with duty toward one’s people and one’s native land.

The simple scenery and props – superbly lit by Fabrice Kebour – are of strongly symbolic character, and effectively stimulate the viewer’s imagination. The costumes drawn from various eras reflect the figurative nature of the libretto: an adaptation of Le duc d’Albe, in the case of the French version transporting the action from the original 16^th-century Flanders back to the 13^th century; in the later Italian version, again transporting the original action to another reality – this time, that of 17^th-century Portugal under Spanish rule. In Pountney’s take, the French occupation forces look down upon the oppressed Sicilians from the heights of ladders that move about the stage. Hélène – dressed in a black gown – rides onstage in a frame, like a portrait of a widow from the insurrection. Procida, returning from exile, clambers onto the shore from a non-existent boat, laboriously passing through the next of the three mobile frames. The ballet from Act III, originally intended as an allegory of the four seasons, turns into a drastic tale about the fortunes of Henri – starting with the seduction of his mother by Montfort – conveyed in the expressive language of modern dance mixed with pantomime (spectacular choreography by Caroline Finn). This theatre-within-a-theatre is observed by viewers hidden behind the silhouettes of characters from the Sicilian Opera dei Pupi. In Act IV, the wired walls of the prison slide together from both sides, almost crushing the conspirators held within. Confusion ensues only in the finale, which is even less clear than in the opera libretto – this is probably the only unsuccessful element of Pountney’s concept. In this case, I agree with the critics that a stage director of this standing should not lack for ideas to sum up the narrative.

Giorgio Caoduro (Guy de Montfort) with Marine Tournet (dancer). Photo: Johan Person

That evening, Carlo Rizzi found himself in his element. He skillfully highlighted the greatest strengths of this score – the bizarrely orchestrated collection of themes and motifs from the work in the terrifying overture, the spatial effects in the truly Meyerbeerian choruses, the clear diversification of compositional language in the emotion-laden arias, the intimate duets and the overwhelmingly enormous sound of the ensemble scenes. He also brought out the musical best in the scenes that were ‘miscarried’ in dramaturgical terms: chief among them the brilliant quartet from Act I, full of unearthly harmonies. With the soloists, the results were varying. Just as Susanna took over the foreground in Le nozze di Figaro, so the rest of the cast in the Vêpres was dominated by Giorgio Caoduro (Guy de Montfort), an Italian baritone endowed with a bright, passionate voice and, at the same time, superb in terms of character, the type of singer who rivets the audience’s attention from his first entrance onstage. In terms of acting, he was fully equaled by Anush Hovhannisyan (Hélène), whose very expressive soprano was – unfortunately – not yet mature enough for this role, and therefore marred by insecure intonation and a dull sound in the low register. Her partner Jung Soo Yun did what he could in the thankless role of Henri: technically, he was exemplary; however, he aroused mixed feelings, for nature has punished him with a tenor of extraordinarily unpleasant, indeed repulsive timbre. If someone were to attempt a studio recording of Les vêpres, the velvet-voiced Wojtek Gierlach would be the Procida of one’s dreams; onstage, however, he was lacking in the charisma that is an inseparable part of this fanatic patriot’s character. Among the supporting roles, particularly noteworthy were Christine Byrne (Ninette) and Robyn Lyn Evans (Danieli) – for instance, even just for their contribution to the tremendous quartet ‘Quel horreur m’environne’.

In the aforementioned rugby match, the French beat the Welsh by four points. I don’t know if it will comfort Cardiff sports fans, but at the same time, the Welsh National Opera ensemble effectively routed opponents of Verdi’s forgotten work.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Exactly three years have passed since my last visit to Athens. For the Lohengrin staging prepared by Antony McDonald, I was prepared to go anywhere – and I still am, if this extraordinary production sees more revivals. At that time, I happened upon a crucial moment in the history of the Greek National Opera: it was the last première under the directorship of Myron Michailidis, who was removed from his artistic position by the Minister of Culture at that time, Lydia Koniordou. A few months later, the ensemble moved to its new headquarters on the premises of the Kéntro Politismoú Ídryma Stávros Niárchos, a complex built by a foundation named after one of the most powerful Greek shipping magnates. Plunged into an economic crisis, Greece – the ‘sick man of Europe’ with debt exceeding 180% of GDP – struggled to realize this endeavour, whose final cost came out to EUR 566 million. The enormous complex, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, included the new headquarters of the Opera and the Greek National Library, as well as a park over 20 hectares in surface area, which for the moment resembles a just barely regenerated forest nursery.

Michailidis’ legacy was taken over by composer Giorgos Koumendakis, who had previously directed the Opera’s alternative stage. The ensemble’s operations at the new headquarters were begun by Vassilis Christopoulos, one of the most interesting Greek conductors of the younger generation, who chose Strauss’ Elektra, not previously presented in this country, for the inauguration in 2017. The première was accepted enthusiastically, as was the production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk that took place almost two years later under the same baton. This year, the GNO management decided to raise the theatre’s prestige to a yet higher level, inviting French stage director, actor and dramaturg Olivier Py to collaborate in the first Greek production of Wozzeck. Py is the current director of the Avignon Festival, an ardent advocate of political theatre and a suggestive scandalmonger who loves to combine hard-core sex and nudity with religious subtexts in his stagings. With iron consistency. But not always with good results.

Panagiotis Priftis (Madman) and Tassis Christoyannis (Wozzeck). Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

We have more and more directors in opera theatre who prioritize their original ‘signature’ over the more or less obvious message of the work. By the laws of probability, sometimes they do succeed in getting to the heart of the matter. This time, not so much. In the Athens production, the revolving stage again spun with an illusion of a soulless metropolis designed by Pierre-André Weitz. Props and symbols played to exhaustion in Olivier Py’s previous stagings appeared on the stage of Stavros Niarchos Hall: a skull, a circus clown, unbridled orgies in disco lighting. To make the matter worse, there was no lack of ideas familiar from other malapropos takes on Wozzeck, chief among them the Warsaw concept of Krzysztof Warlikowski, repeated with certain modifications at De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam – among others, transvestite Apprentices and a Captain transported to ‘civilian life’, who comes out in Olivier Py’s vision as an ordinary Herr Hauptmann.

Nadine Lehner (Marie) and Peter Wedd (Drum Major). Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

I have written many times now that Wozzeck can be modernized, but this opera should not be removed from a military context: the only one where the opera’s dilemma of power and dependence fully reaches the viewer; the only one that permits one to fully understand why the Doctor and the Captain treat the title character like swine and speak to him in the third person. Py went even further: he tangled up the two orders. There is no stuffy barracks atmosphere here, there are no direct references to cruel experiments on conscripts; on the other hand, there is a pot of peas upon which not only Wozzeck gorges, as well as medical examinations that consist mainly in removing the protagonist’s trousers and underpants. In place of the operetta-ish Drum Major, we see a sadist in uniform who torments his own sub-unit. We do not know who Wozzeck really is, and why he puts up with all of the humiliation. His insanity appears to have nothing to do with wrongs done to him – the figure of the Madman (in the form of a clown) accompanies him almost from the beginning, excluding anyone’s causative contribution to the final tragedy. There are houses of concrete, there is no free love, there are marital relations and acts of fornication – just as in Martyna Jakubowicz’s immortal ballad – and nothing comes of it. In this concept, Marie’s red slip disappears, her red earrings do not shine, there is neither blood nor a red moon. There is a gray wall, a gray staircase and gray windows – as in all of Olivier Py’s stagings to date.

Tassis Christoyannis. Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

A pity all the greater that Vassilis Christopoulos drew out of this score everything that could possibly be drawn from it: its merciless moto perpetuo, the luminous texture of the polyphony, the precision of the insistently-recurring micro-motifs. All the more admiration for Tassis Christoyannis in the title role – who, making masterful use of his delicate, shockingly lyrical baritone, managed to supply Wozzeck with the characteristics that the staging’s creator had skimped on giving him. In terms of vocal technique, he was fully equaled by Peter Hoare in the role of the Captain – a tenor going far beyond the ‘character’ requirements of this role, endowed with a bright, intonationally secure and superbly-placed voice. Nadine Lehner, in the role of Marie, did not always manage well with Stavros Niarchos Hall’s difficult acoustics – her soft soprano, beautifully developed in the lower register, sometimes sounded too dry and harsh in the upper notes of her range. Peter Wedd gave the impression of not completely entering into the role given him by the stage director: his beautiful, rounded, truly heroic singing did not fit with the repulsive vision of the Drum Major – let us add: a vision not in accordance with the concept of Berg, who saw a grotesque figure in Marie’s lover rather than a terrifying psychopath. Among the creators of the supporting roles, a sympathetic mention is certainly deserved by Vassilis Kavayas – who, despite having been neglected by the stage director, tried to build a convincing character of Wozzeck’s friend Andres.

I don’t know how the further fortunes of the Greek National Opera will play out. For various reasons, I wish them all the best. Bringing Olivier Py to Athens was certainly a smooth marketing move; but in the longer term, nonetheless, it would be worthwhile to initiate collaborations with artists who have something truly essential to say in this peculiar theatrical form. I still have in memory an interview that Py gave a dozen or so years ago to the French monthly Diapason. At the time, he said he would not rest as an opera stage director until he had tackled a production of Wagner’s Parsifal or Der Ring des Nibelungen. Perhaps some other theatre will summon up the courage, and we will be able to finally close that subject?

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Comparing events and aesthetic trends in the history of opera is both interesting and instructive. This time I tackled two works seemingly separated by a huge gulf: Tristan und Isolde and The Bartered Bride. Wagner finished working on his drama in 1859. Smetana got around to composing his comic opera four years later. However, the two works were premiered within less than a year. After failed attempts to stage it in Strasbourg, Paris, Karlsruhe, Vienna, and even Rio de Janeiro, Tristan eventually found its way on to the stage of the Königliches Hof- und National Theater in Munich, but it was not until June 1865. The Bartered Bride was premiered in May 1866 at Prague’s Provisional Theatre, next to which today’s National Theatre was later erected. Neither Tristan nor The Bartered Bride was a runaway success. The two operas began their triumphant march across international stages after the death of their composers – again, more or less at the same time, at the turn of the 1880s. Gustav Mahler admired both operas and conducted both at the Metropolitan Opera – he presented The Bartered Bride to the New York audience in 1909, precisely one year after performances of Tristan he had conducted to rapturous applause.

Although this might sound like a heresy, the strange parallelism in the life of the two masterpieces may have similar causes. Contrary to the unjust opinion of many music lovers – especially those in Poland, who to this day regard Smetana as a Czech Moniuszko but with more luck with sponsors and publicity specialists – both composers were modernists and keen reformers, although in different fields. Wagner sought to put into practice the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the form of a modern music drama, while Smetana came up with a vision of a modern comic opera. The unique “Czechness” of Smetana’s mature oeuvre does not in any way diminish its progressive nature. The inspirations behind the musical language of the author of The Bartered Bride were similar to those behind Wagner’s style: it is as full of novelty as it is of sophisticated references to the classics of the Italian bel canto and Meyerbeer’s oeuvre. The apparent simplicity of the first Czech national opera lies solely in its melodic layer – in which, it should be noted, the composer almost never resorted to literal quotations from folklore. Mastery of the orchestra, unconventional harmonic solutions and the internal pulse of the work inextricably interwoven with the prosody of the language contributed to the creation of a completely new operatic idiom. Unfortunately, for a long time Smetana’s was the fate of other pioneers whose ideas were mercilessly juxtaposed with the style of their later continuators. Accused of “Wagnerism” by his contemporaries, snubbed by many of his successors, Smetana still falls victim to dismissive remarks of musicologists who look for “Smetanisms” in works by his less inspired imitators.

The Bartered Bride in Munich. Pavlo Breslik (Hans) and Selene Zanetti (Marie). Photo: Wilfried Hösl

Personally, I love The Bartered Bride in all its language versions, primarily the German version by Max Kalbeck, which for decades was more effective in conquering international stages than Karel Sabina’s Czech original. This is why I couldn’t miss an opportunity to see, literally on two consecutive nights, modern productions of the two masterpieces in German theatres: the last performance of the season of The Bartered Bride at the Bavarian State Opera and the premiere of Tristan at the Frankfurt Opera. Especially given that the two directors have a lot in common: both are fairly young, were born in Germany, have a solid musical background and quite considerable experience in opera, acquired also outside their homeland.

A few years ago I wrote rather critically about David Bösch’s Die tote Stadt for Dresden’s Semperoper. For a long time the director has tried to shed the image of a theatrical “Brother Merry” who is in his element only in comedy. Judging by his take on Korngold’s opera, he has not been very successful in this. In The Bartered Bride he was able to give free rein to his imagination and go for a rather unique, at times quite risky, sense of humour. He sets the crazy story of the two suitors of the beautiful Marie (Mařenka’s name in the German version) on a neglected farm in one of the poorest German Länder, probably in the former GDR – much to the delight of the obscenely wealthy residents of Munich, I suspect. The action takes place between a privy, a stack of scalded hay and dung, and a worn-out conveyor belt (Patrick Bannwart’s brilliant sets). Class divisions between the protagonists are aptly replaced by Bösch with social inequalities in today’s Germany (costumes by Falko Herald). Marie’s indebted parents look as if they have come straight from an intervention TV documentary, while Micha and Agnes – as if they have been plunged into this pandemonium straight from a nouveau riche villa in Bavaria. Kezal owns a marriage bureau specialising in matching partners ready to pay a lot of money for their wedding to be as tasteless as possible. The people living in the village are divided into dirty farm workers (older generation), and dyed brunettes and blondes accompanied by long-haired metal fans dancing “Seht am Strauch die Knospen springen” (“Proč bychom se netěšili”) with their hands making the characteristic devil horn gestures. The circus artists arrive in the village in a Trabant and mix with the participants of a village fête during which beer flows from a makeshift beer cart, and physiological urges are satisfied in one stack of hay.

Mirjam Mesak (Esmeralda) and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Wenzel). Photo: Wilfried Hösl

The action is a fast-flowing coarse farce which may make the more sophisticated music lovers flush with embarrassment. Fortunately, I am not subtle and so I greeted each new coarse gag with increasing amusement – especially that the gags suited the narrative perfectly and the artists threw themselves into them unsparingly with full conviction. It would be difficult to imagine a better cast for The Bartered Bride: with splendid voices, excellent acting skills and extraordinary sense of comedy. The phenomenal Hans of Pavol Breslik, singing with an open, crystal clear, typically “Czech” tenor, worked brilliantly with Marie as portrayed by Selene Zanetti, who has a soprano which is rather dark for the role, but sensual and touchingly soft (she was magnificent in her Act III aria). Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Wenzel) and Mirjam Mesak (Esmeralda) were perfect in their character roles – with Ablinger-Sperrhacke proving to be a much better singer of the part than most performers of the role today, and Mesak displaying great ballet and acrobatic skills (which enabled her to do a bit of rope-dancing as well!). No one doubts Günther Groissböck’s comic talent, but there were moments when he even outshone himself as Kezal – I couldn’t decide what to admire more in the famous duet with Hans in Act II: the singing of the two gentlemen or the acting of Groissböck praising a girl “who’s got the money”. The whole performance was conducted very stylishly and in daring tempi by Tomáš Hanus, the current Music Director of the Welsh National Opera.

Tristan und Isolde in Frankfurt. Vincent Wolfsteiner (Tristan) and Rachel Nicholls (Isolde). Photo: Barbara Aumüller

I’ll begin my report on Tristan und Isolde from the singers this time, because I admit I went to see the premiere of the new production in Frankfurt primarily because of Rachel Nicholls, who made her debut as Isolde five years ago in Longborough. Since then her soprano has become firmer, has developed at both ends of the range and grown in dramatic strength. Nicholls sings with a tireless voice – irresistible like an elementary force and shimmering like light reflected by snow – emphatically stressing the nuances of her protagonist’s inner transformation. Vincent Wolfsteiner, whose tenor is rather fragile and without much depth, was not even half as intense in his expression, but I have to admit that he did know how to pace himself and survived without harm until the end of the performance. In the duet “O sink’ hernieder, Nacht der Liebe” he even rose to a higher level of musical rhetoric, at times bordering on ecstasy. Christoph Poll’s handsome although a bit fragile baritone (Kurwenal) did not reach the height of expression until Act III. On the other hand admirable performances came from Claudia Mahnke, velvety-voiced and beautifully nuanced in her rendition of Brangäne, and, above all Andreas Bauer Kanabas, who sang the bitterness and pain of King Marke with a ringing bass, even and resplendent in its colour, combined with an impressive stage presence and excellent acting. However, Sebastian Weigle’s overall musical concept was less convincing than in the case of last year’s Walküre – the conductor has a penchant for sharp tempi and, in my opinion, excessive lightening of textures, which does not always suit the score of Tristan, pulsating, as it is, like a living organism and moving inexorably forward.

Christoph Pohl (Kurwenal), Andreas Bauer Kanabas (King Marke), Vincent Wolfsteiner (Tristan), Rachel Nicholls (Isolde), Claudia Mahnke (Brangäne) and Tianji Lin (Shepherd). Photo: Barbara Aumüller

Yet with all these reservations the Frankfurt Opera’s Tristan has proved to be one of the best Wagner productions of recent seasons. This is also thanks to Katharina Thoma’s staging – understated, visually sophisticated (sets by Johannes Leiacker, costumes by Irina Bartels, lighting by Olaf Winter) and trying to get to the essence of this mysterious narrative. The director places the action of her Tristan is a sterile space in which transitions from the reality of phenomena to the reality beyond cognition – from the world of the Day to the world of the Night – occur through symbolic gestures and abstract props (a simple boat, black in Acts I and III, white in Act II; a black wall marking a moving boundary between the two worlds in Act II; bright sunshine coming through the door left ajar during Isolde’s final arrival). At several points in the action Thoma introduced discreet biographical tropes, linking the figure of Tristan to Wagner’s complicated childhood (for example, the black spectres of the parents during Tristan’s agony – wearing white featureless masks bringing to mind the Japanese noppera-bō demons, which torment the living with an illusory resemblance to their beloved dead). If there is anything jarring in this concept for me, it is only the finale, in which Isolde sends Tristan deep into the long-for Night of death and is left alone on the side of the Day – on an empty, blindingly white stage. But it will take me a long time to forget the mysterious expression on Nicholls’ face, slowly cut off from the audience by the curtain flowing from above.

So there is some hope yet. Thoroughly modern directors tackle masterpieces of reformers and delve into their meanings instead of imposing their own meanings on them. Let us hope we will not miss another revolution in the theatre.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Psychiatrists compare the state of being in love with acute sexual psychosis. The prefrontal cortex begins to play tricks on us, the thyroid goes nuts, the body – even if exhausted – dips into its deepest energy reserves. The heart pounds like a hammer, the pulse accelerates, the blood pressure rises. Love activates centers in the brain associated with the so-called reward system. One never knows when it will happen and what hole in our life it will try to fill up. Longing for a non-existent sibling? For an equal intellectual partner? For a potential parent of our future children together? Or perhaps just someone who will drown out our fear of the world?

In the case of rejected, unfulfilled or disappointed love, the reward system ceases to function properly. Suffering appears that is comparable to acute mourning upon the death of someone truly close. Sadness, anger and a feeling of hurt sometimes turn into aggression – directed at oneself or against one’s surroundings. People who have not managed to satisfy their hunger for love, or feed it with something else, begin to fear their own feelings. This is well known to mature and experienced people, among them Israeli-American composer Chaya Czernowin, who has devoted her most recent opera – ambiguously entitled Heart Chamber – to one of the plagues of our time: fear of unexpectedly falling in love.

Heart Chamber at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Patrizia Ciofi (She) and Dietrich Henschel (He). Photo: Michael Trippel

The story is apparently simple. A woman drops a jar of honey on the stairs. A man picks it up and gives it to the woman. Their hands touch for a moment. Something sparks between the two strangers. The narrative develops kaleidoscopically. We view the successive scenes as if in a quickly put-together film, in close-ups and at a distance, in dreams and retrospections, illustrating similar dreams, dilemmas and frustrations, but playing out separately: in the two realities of two frightfully lonely people.

There are two protagonists, and infinitely many voices. The sentences that the baritone He and the soprano She (Patrizia Ciofi and Dietrich Henschel, captivating in their subtlety and lyricism) articulate are accompanied by their inner voices, which often contradict the words spoken aloud (contralto Noa Frenkel and countertenor Terry Wey); a solo voice from offstage (Frauke Aulbert); and the voices of a 16-person chorus. Woven into the main vocal fabric of the composition, which is partially amplified and processed, is a searing double bass solo (Uli Fussenegger); the parts of the four instrumentalists comprising Ensemble Nikel and the orchestra, and complex live electronics superbly distributed in space (all under the baton of the dependable Johannes Kalitzke). The rich musical material has a slightly different structure than in Czernowin’s earlier works. The composer has called it Fluid Form/Fluid Identity – a fluid sonic identity that basically forms as unexpectedly as the feeling that arises between the two people. And indeed, the individual sonic threads alternatingly connect and disentangle, running backwards and across the narrative, sometimes disappearing into the background, only to again imperceptibly emerge from it.

Czernowin wrote the libretto of Heart Chamber herself and dedicated it to her husband, composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi. She broke it up into pieces like the voices in a polyphonic fabric, creating peculiar semantic clouds that speak to the hearer not so much in an ordered sequence of meanings, as in an arrangement of sonorities evoking the mood of the moment. An immeasurably interesting procedure, masterfully executed from a technical standpoint – but it would have gained in expressive power if the composer had decided to collaborate with an experienced librettist, or taken on some really good poetry. Because it is the text that has turned out to be the weakest link of Heart Chamber: full of tiresome repetitions, sometimes pretentious, sometimes glaringly pompous.

Heart Chamber. Patrizia Ciofi and Dietrich Henschel. Photo: Michael Trippel

Maybe this is why I had the impression that Czernowin’s opera is a bit verbose. There was no way to avoid dramaturgical shortcomings – despite the superb performance and brilliant staging. I wrote about the recent première of Rusalka at Theater an der Wien, with Christian Schmidt (a regular collaborator of Claus Guth) responsible for the stage design, which in Vienna was unfortunately ‘married’ to the staging ideas of Amélie Niermeyer. In Berlin, I had the opportunity to find out how those ubiquitous steps, clumps of grass and Modernist spaces would play together with Guth’s concept. And I still cannot stop marveling: the video projections (authored by rocafilm) harmonised ideally with the music, every element of the stage gesture was literally breathtaking. Especially memorable for me was the scene in which She finally realised that she will not escape from her love – when Guth ‘played out’ the episode of picking up the dropped honey jar with another actor and no sparks flew. From that moment onward, viewers were sure that She would finally confess her love to Him. They did not expect that her declaration would fall into a theatrical void – that it would leave the narrative open, elliptical, confronted with the fears of viewers themselves.

I thought about all of these fears and frustrations before setting out for the new production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Oper Frankfurt. Shostakovich’s anathematised opera is treated today in terms of a ghastly harbinger of the Great Purge’s cruelty, ignoring the historical context of the libretto’s prototype – a short story published in 1865 by Nikolai Leskov, a detention officer in the city of Oryol on the Oka River, who wove personal experiences with prisoners and the circumstances of their inhuman transport to Siberian hell into his narrative. Stage director Anselm Weber – since two years ago intendant of Schauspiel Frankfurt, housed in the same building – has realised two excellently-received productions for the opera ensemble: Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and Wajnberg’s The Passenger.

In the case of The Passenger, he did not dare to go outside the context. In the case of Korngold’s opera, he gave his interpretation a distinct touch of German Expressionism, also visible in his concept of Lady Macbeth. Stage designer Kaspar Glarner set the whole in scenery bringing to mind associations here with the imagery of Fritz Lang’s films, there with some later dystopia – perhaps a post-apocalyptic vision of a new Russia that has had to go underground after a nuclear or environmental catastrophe. The narrative plays out in a stuffy, claustrophobic space – inside a closed dam? In the sarcophagus holding the fourth nuclear reactor at Chernobyl? In an atomic bomb shelter? It is difficult to determine, all the more to that the production team – clearly attached to their vision – decided to ignore the character drama playing out in the strictly-defined and characteristic circumstances.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Oper Frankfurt. Dmitry Golovnin (Sergei) and Anja Kampe (Katerina Izmailova). Photo: Barbara Aumüller

In Weber’s rendition, Katerina Izmailova is the empty, completely intellectually unattractive wife of an oligarch’s son. She is so bored that despite having Internet access, she finds comfort only in virtual reality. As is often the case with Russian oligarchs’ partners, she experiences her spleen in a peignoir, silver wig and high-heeled shoes. We don’t really know what she longs for: a clean natural environment that is no longer there, or a closeness that she has never experienced with anyone.

Despite everything, Weber’s staging draws attention: intriguing, though often at odds with the logic of character treatment; amazing in its attachment to minor details of the libretto (e.g. the rolling of the unfortunate Aksinya in a barrel), while also ignoring key elements of the text (above all, how did mushrooms, of all things, find their way into this bunker?). The stage director deftly set up a few gags, among others the little scene with the Village Drunk (the vocally and theatrically splendid Peter Marsh), who instead of his longed-for bottle finds the corpse of Zinovy. He was unable, however, to go beyond the trite metaphor of oppression and impossibility of escape. And that, literally: the procession of exiles trudges through the same space where Sergei seduced Katerina, in which Boris cruelly whipped the workman, in which policemen tormented the Local Nihilist teacher, who had been trying to find out whether a frog has a soul.

What suffered the most was the characterisation of the female protagonist. Katerina in the rendition of Anja Kampe does indeed inspire awe with her vocal artistry – the singer treats her cold, intonationally-secure soprano with equal intensity throughout the entire narrative. But she is disappointing in the one-dimensionality of her character: Izmailova is, after all, one of the most complex characters in the 20^th-century opera literature, evolving from the naïve innocence of a village girl to the passion and determination of an erotically aroused woman, to the complete moral decay of a serial murderess whose perfidy, in the end, will even so be all in vain. Against this background, a better impression was made by Evgeny Akimov (Zinovy), and especially by Dmitry Golovnin in the role of Sergei – an egoistic compulsive seducer, endowed with an equally authoritative and repulsive-sounding spinto tenor. They were, however, decidedly eclipsed by Dmitry Belosselsky in the dual role of Boris and the Old Convict – a true Russian bass with a wide-open high register, dense in sound and phenomenal in terms of articulation. Also deserving of favourable mention were the performers of the secondary female roles: Anna Lapkovskaya (Sonyetka), making her Frankfurt debut with a sonorous, voluminous mezzo-soprano; and the velvet-voiced Julia Dawson in the sad role of Aksinya.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Peter Marsh (Village Drunk), Julia Dawson (Aksinya), and Dmitry Golovnin. Photo: Barbara Aumüller

All of the deficiencies of Weber’s staging were recompensed with interest by Sebastian Weigle on the conductor’s podium. At least he fully understood the tragedy and grotesquery of this story – encapsulated in the heartbreakingly sensual role of Katerina, the vulgar tackiness of the episodes featuring the policemen, the ear-splitting crudeness of the sex and violence scenes, the paralyzing terror of the choruses from Act IV that bring to mind the most pessimistic passages from Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. And he had at his disposal his dependable ensemble, in which I don’t know what to admire more: the sonorous, sparkling brass, or the strings sobbing with a human voice in the interludes.

And so less than a week apart, I treated myself to two liminal experiences. Two operas that destroy one’s sense of security. Two operas about love that arouses panic-stricken fear. Maybe it’s a good thing that both production teams didn’t entirely succeed. Maybe the world is better than Shostakovich and Czernowin paint it.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

As the Germans began to lose the war, RAF and US Air Force bombers intensified their raids on Hanover in Lower Saxony – an city of half a million inhabitants, an important railway hub and headquarters of companies like Continental AG, Hanomag and AFA producing tyres for military equipment, tracked  armoured personnel carriers and batteries for submarines. In nearly ninety air raids the allies dropped one thousand parachute mines, thirty-four thousand aerial bombs and nearly one million incendiary bombs. The last raid took place in March 1945. The historic city centre practically ceased to exist. After the war eight million cubic metres of rubble were removed from Hanover. Like in many over destroyed German cities, plans to painstakingly rebuild the old town were abandoned; what was created instead was an “American” metropolis cut through by arterial streets with some buildings of historic significance reconstructed here and there, immersed in a sea of new, modernist edifices.

Among them was a classicist building of Staatstheater Hannover, erected in the mid-19th century after a design by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves, one of the most outstanding architects of the Hanoverian court. The opera house opened in 1852 with a performance of The Marriage of Figaro. In 1918 the building passed into the hands of the Prussian government. On 26 July 1943 it burnt down during a mass air raid by the Allies on the centre of Hanover. It was reconstructed after the war under the guidance of the Hamburg-based architect Werner Kallmorgen and reopened in 1950. It underwent alterations – primarily in the auditorium and the vast foyer – made by Dieter Oesterlen in the mid-1980s. The impressive frontage of the edifice now hides a simple and elegant, though quite impersonal interior, which neither interferes with the audience’s reception of performances, nor brings anything special into the atmosphere of this theatrical temple.

Rachel Nicholls as Salome. Photo: Clemens Heidrich

I was lucky, in a way, that during my first visit to the Hanover Opera I encountered the work of Ingo Kerkhof, a young director, and not another example of Regieoper, which sometimes can be truly grotesque in German theatres. Kerkhof made his debut in Hanover two and a half years ago with a production of the same Marriage of Figaro that launched the Laves-Oper. A few months later he staged Strauss’ Salome, with sets by Anne Neuser and costumes by Inge Medert, choreographed by Mathias Brühlmann and lit by Elana Siberski. The production, presided over by Ivan Repušić, the company’s newly appointed Music Director, was quite coldly received – primarily because of Kerkhof’s static and not quite developed concept.

This season Salome returned to the stage with a fresh cast and a different conductor. I don’t know to what extent Kerkhof had polished his original vision – not a great extent, I suspect, if this time, too, he failed to avoid several inconsistencies, rightly pointed out by the critics after the premiere. I have to admit, however, that his staging is as harmless and as inessential as Oesterlen’s impersonal design of the theatre’s interior – neutral with regard to the music and bringing nothing new to the production history of Strauss’ one-act opera. In various interviews he stressed (like most directors do today) that the action of the opera took place everywhere and nowhere, in some unspecified period, and the narrative focused on the eponymous heroine’s rebellion against patriarchal oppression. He conveyed the indeterminacy of time by contemporary costumes, and of place – by minimalistic sets, which proved to be the production’s greatest asset. Herodes’ palace was completely empty, closed upstage by a string curtain, which quivered in a blue light like a night-time landscape in bright moonlight. The barrier separating Jochanaan from the external world was symbolised by a golden glowing metal curtain. The space was clean and, theoretically, provided a lot of room for manoeuvre for the director. Unfortunately, Kerkhof managed to deliver relatively precise portrayals of only three characters: of Salome, spoiled and cruel, but truly fascinated by Jochanaan; of a prophet blinded by his faith and struggling to resist the princess’ designs; and a grotesque Herodes, driven not so much by unbridled lust but an overwhelming desire to control those around him. Narraboth committed suicide as if in passing, Herodias kept passing her daughter on stage, and the other characters made up a chaotic crowd bringing to mind very inebriated participants in a carnival party that is petering out. Salome danced (entrancingly) the Dance of the Seven Veils accompanied by men wearing women’s clothes. She unveiled Jochanaan’s head brought in a bundle on a platter like a horrifying warning from the mafia. It was only in the finale that a bloodcurdling drama unfolded – when Salome, in ecstasy, spoke to the prophet’s remains, smeared his blood on herself and at the end kissed the corpse’s lips, as all gathered around watched in horror. At the end, however, instead of being killed by soldiers, she slowly walked away upstage into the rocking night.

Robert Künzli (Herodes) and Rachel Nicholls. Photo: Clemens Heidrich

Despite the oddities and failed ideas, the whole thing was not bad to watch and brilliant to listen to, thanks to nearly all performers. Rachel Nicholls, in a guest performance as Salome, created a portrayal that was memorable both acting- and singing-wise. Her cool, at times even inhuman and yet surprisingly sensual soprano shone like a knife across the range, from a precisely hit high B to an uncannily vivid pianissimo G flat in the lower register – a note desperately barked out by most performers of this gruelling part. The slightly wooden Kostas Smoriginas (Jochanaan) made up for his stage shortcomings with a beautifully rounded and very well placed baritone. Herodes was brilliantly portrayed by Robert Künzli – a tenor a class above the character singers usually cast in the role, with a ringing voice with a distinctive “steel” in the middle register, perfectly controlled both in legato sections and in faster passages requiring crystal clear diction and lucid articulation. Big applause was due to Rupert Charlesworth, an ardent, youthful-sounding Narraboth. Among the rest of the cast a singer deserving a particularly warm mention was Nina van Essen (The Page of Herodias) with her perfectly focused, warm and soft mezzo-soprano.

Salome’s final monologue. Photo: Clemens Heidrich

I have to admit I did not expect such a wealth of colours and such clear contrasts from the local orchestra, conducted by Stephan Zilias making his Hanover debut. The young German conductor has demonstrated several times that he is a true operatic animal. In the case of Salome he worked with an orchestra smaller than the one intended by the composer, and yet he managed to elicit a full sound from it, maintain an obsessive, relentless pulse of the whole narrative and skilfully emphasise the most delicious details, from the lustful passage of the clarinet in the introduction to the ominous murmur of the double basses during the preparations for Jochanaan’s execution.

In the final monologue Salome wonders for a moment whether the bitterness in her mouth after kissing Jochanaan’s lips comes from the taste of blood. The sensual and, at the same time, cruel interpretation presented by Zilias, under whose baton everyone performed at their absolute best, demonstrated from the very beginning how bitter love tasted. And how easily it could be turned into death.

Translated by: Anna Kijak