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It is time to take the medieval epic poem The Song of the Nibelungs off the shelf, and put the libretto of Wagner’s Ring in among the other fairy tales. The protagonist of this tale, one of the bloodiest in the history of European literature, is the Germanic princess Kriemhild, who dreamed of a falcon killed by two eagles. Her mother explained to her daughter the meaning of the ominous dream, which augured the death of her future husband at the hands of assassins. The frightened princess decided to remain a virgin forever, but fate decided otherwise. Siegfried the valiant dragon-slayer arrived at the castle of the House of Burgundy and asked King Gunther for the hand of his virgin sister. The king agreed, on the condition that the warrior would help him win the affection of the beautiful Brünhild, Queen of Iceland. Siegfried impersonated Gunther and fulfilled the king’s wish. He himself married Kriemhild. The continuation of the epic poem is a long and convoluted story of betrayal, intrigue and corruption which leads first to the fulfillment of the prediction in Kriemhild’s dream, and then to bloody revenge of catastrophic effect on her husband’s murderers.

In the Icelandic Saga of the Völsungs, alluding to the earlier Poetic Edda, the dragon-slayer’s name is Sigurd; during one of his wanderings, he awakens Brynhild from an enchanted sleep and falls in love with her; she, however, foretells him death and marriage to another woman. In the background of all medieval tales of the fortunes of Siegfried/Sigurd are invasions of the Roman Empire by the Huns and Germans, as well as the slow formation process of the Frankish tribal state, on whose foundation the empire of Charlemagne arose over time. Interwoven with references to history is fairy-tale reality – tales of dragons, dwarves and werewolves, spells and love potions, invisibility helmets and shattered swords. This treasury was drawn upon by Wagner and by Friedrich Hebbel, the author of a stage trilogy entitled Die Nibelungen; in 1862, it was used by French dramaturg and librettist Alfred Blau, who was inspired by the French translation of the Edda from nearly a quarter century earlier, and by the quite fresh translation of The Song of the Nibelungs. It was at this time that the first sketches were made for the libretto of Sigurd, which another librettist and influential theatrical personality – Camille du Locle – put into versified form. The two librettists were friendly with Ernest Reyer, before whom the doors had just opened to a great career, as a result of his recent success with the three-act opera La statue, esteemed by Massenet himself and performed at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris nearly 60 times in its first season.

In the opinion of some musicologists, a draft of the score of Sigurd was ready even before the première of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, not to mention the staging of the entire tetralogy in Bayreuth five years later. So it is difficult to speak of a French ‘answer’ to Der Ring des Nibelungen, of which Reyer had an otherwise quite vague idea. He carried out the first negotiations with the Paris Opera already in 1866; later, he undertook further negotiations, rejected because of the work’s supposed ‘unperformability’, though at the beginning of the 1870s, the composer presented fragments of Acts I and III as part of the Concerts Populaires under the baton of Jules Pasdeloup. It is not out of the question that the Opera’s management was afraid of a disaster after the cool reception of Érostrate at Le Peletier in 1871. Finally, the world première of Sigurd took place at La Monnaie in 1884, and ended in enormous success. In the next season, the opera conquered stages in London, Lyon and Monte Carlo, after which it arrived in triumph – though in an abridged version – on the stage of the… Paris Opera. For many years, Sigurd drew crowds: Edgar Degas reportedly saw it no less than 37 times.

Nancy, 1914: the new stage under construction. Photo: opera-national-lorraine.fr

The Théâtre de la Comédie in Nancy, once located at the rear of the Musée des beaux-arts on the western frontage of the Place Stanislas, burnt to the ground on the night of 4–5 October 1906, after a rehearsal of Thomas’ Mignon. A decision to rebuild was made immediately after the fire. The competition for the design was won by local architect Joseph Hornecker. The building was erected on the eastern frontage, behind the surviving façade of the former bishop’s palace. The grand opening took place in October 1919 – the theatre’s operations were inaugurated with Reyer’s opera. A hundred years later, the Opéra national de Lorraine decided to open its jubilee year with two concert performances of Sigurd.

Not only the occasion, but also the place was appropriate to resurrect the memory of the four-act opera on motifs from The Song of the Nibelungs: the titular protagonist fell with a stroke from Gunther in the nearby Vosges Mountains, and a substantial portion of the plot plays out in Worms, just under 200 km away. It is all the more regrettable that they were not able to present the work in a fully-staged version, especially since Sigurd is in certain respects more dramaturgically concise than Wagner’s Ring, and abounds in episodes that just beg for the participation of an imaginative stage director. But it would not be right to complain, since the theatre’s management was able to engage a choice cast of soloists and, above all, a conductor who knew the material well.

For Sigurd is a thoroughly French opera – with its rich orchestration and epic panache, the score reminds one of Berlioz’ Les Troyens; with its references to declamatory style and Classical division into scenes, with clearly-indicated participation of chorus and orchestra, it resembles Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride; and with its picturesque contrasts, it brings to mind the grands opéras of Meyerbeer. In addition, Reyer intended for the cast to include singers with voices of exceptional values: a truly heroic tenor, two full-blooded dramatic sopranos, a powerful baritone with a sonorous and open, almost tenor-like high register, several ‘French’ basses and a true contralto. The difficulty of putting this all together into a convincing whole rested on the shoulders of a conductor well acquainted with this idiom – in this case, Frédéric Chaslin, who had dealt with Sigurd before and whose interpretation of this work is impressive not only in its feel for pulse and tempo, but also for its logical handling of the narrative and, above all, ideal collaboration with the singers.

The dress rehearsal of Sigurd at the Opéra national de Lorraine. Photo: @frederic.chaslin FB Official Page

In the large title role bristling with difficulties, Peter Wedd – the only foreigner in a cast otherwise comprised only of Francophones – put forth an amazing performance. His ardent, slightly nasal tenor sounded a tad brighter than usual, but without any loss of richness in overtones. Only at moments could one get the impression that the singer was moving in a stylistic language foreign to him: for most of the narrative, as usual, he was impressive in his splendid messa di voce technique and sonorous squillo, with beautiful phrasing in the expansive monologues (superb ‘Le bruit des chants s’éteint dans la forêt immense’ in Act II) and sensitive music-making in the ensemble numbers. Decidedly ‘at home’ was Gunther in the person of Jean-Sébastien Bou – phenomenally balanced in all registers of his baryton-martin, flawless in intonation, very flexible and brilliant in clarity of articulation, supported – of course – by superb diction. Jérôme Boutillier displayed very good technique as well as vocal beauty, though with slightly less vocal culture – but then again, a certain dose of vulgarity is consistent with the repulsive character of Hagen. In the smaller male roles, Nicolas Cavallier (the High Priest of Odin), Eric Martin-Bonnet (the Bard) and Olivier Brunel (Rudiger) put in decent performances.

Two wonderful sopranos dueled in a manner completely befitting rivals for the love of the valiant Sigurd. Catherine Hunold (Brunehild) is enchanting, above all, in her extraordinary musicality and intelligent phrasing. Compared by French critics with Régine Crespin, she has a softer, warmer voice, not so dense in the middle register – at the concert in Nancy, it blossomed into its full brilliance only in Act IV and, to a certain extent in accordance with the narrative, eclipsed the voice of Camille Schnoor in the role of Hilda. The German-French singer’s strength flagged in the finale – a pity, because her velvety, dark soprano displays certain predispositions toward a dramatic voice; but for the moment, she is still closer to the aesthetic of Puccini’s operas. Marie-Ange Todorovitch came across quite convincingly in the role of Uta, though she did sometimes have to cover up vocal deficiencies with sincerity and wisdom of interpretation.

Separate words of praise are due to the enthusiastic chorus (rousing finale of Act III!) and the orchestra, alert and obedient to Chaslin’s baton, deftly highlighting all of the expressive and textural values of this extraordinary score. Ernest Reyer, by later musicologists patronizingly called ‘the Wagner of La Canebière’, had terrible luck. He composed perhaps not a masterpiece, but with all certainty a work that does not deserve a place in the operatic junk pile. Sometimes it is worthwhile to follow the activities of one’s competition, especially one gifted with such talent as the master of Bayreuth.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Magic was present in the theatre on the banks of the Wien River from the very beginning. Emanuel Schikaneder’s troupe moved to a new building on the other bank of the river – almost exactly opposite the Freihaustheater – ten years after the premiere of The Magic Flute. The opening of the Empire-style building, erected in 1801 after a design by Franz Jäger, was celebrated with an allegory Thespis Traum by Schikaneder and Franz Teyber’s heroic opera Alexander. Schikaneder’s dream theatre boasted the biggest and best equipped stage in the entire Habsburg realm. The high-spending impresario spared no expense, putting his wild ideas into practice, as a result of which he had to get rid of the Theater an der Wien less than three years later. However, he did retain the position of its artistic director for a while. The premiere of Leonora, the original version of Beethoven’s Fidelio, took place in 1805, when Schikaneder was already in deep financial trouble. He died impoverished and lonely seven years later. The theatre changed hands many times, with successive owners carrying out alterations and presenting all kinds of works – from operas and operettas, through ballets and pantomimes, to plays. Yet Schikaneder’s mad ghost hovered over the building for decades, watching over the premiere of Schiller’s The Maid of Orleans – featuring eighty horses and four hundred human performers – and the golden age of Viennese operetta marked by the triumphs of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and The Gypsy Baron. After WWII the Theater an der Wien served for a while as a venue for performances of the damaged Staatsoper; in the 1960s – having miraculously avoided a conversion into a municipal car park – it switched to musicals, occasionally making its stage available for Wiener Festwochen events. In 2006, after an extensive renovation, it reopened its doors as an opera house.

Today this historicising-modernist jewel, hidden in the Linke Wienzeile frontage almost as effectively as the Wien River hidden under the Naschmarkt, presents nearly thirty works per season – this season its repertoire includes thirteen new productions and two world premieres (Egmont by Christian Jost and Genia by Tscho Theissing).  In December the Viennese theatre will present Halka directed by Mariusz Treliński and featuring the Arnold Schoenberg Chor and ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien conducted by Łukasz Borowicz. I glanced at the cast of Rusalka, opening the new season, and decided to visit Vienna already in September – to see the interior, hear the acoustics and enjoy a potentially excellent performance of one of my beloved operas. And, if fate would have it, to feast my eyes and ears on an inspired staging of Dvořák’s masterpiece.

Maria Bengtsson (Rusalka) and Ladislav Elgr (Prince). Photo: Herwig Prammer

Fate wouldn’t have it. The German Amélie Niermeyer took on opera directing in 2007, at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, where she staged Wozzeck, La clemenza di Tito and Rigoletto, among others. Since then she has shown many times that she likes to ride roughshod over the queen of musical forms, picking out individual threads and twisting them to fit her own, often one-dimensional concept. In her recent staging of Otello at the Bayerische Staatsoper she managed to reduce the opera to an analysis of marital problems between Desdemona and the eponymous hero, leaving aside the rest of the complicated narrative, which, incidentally, in Verdi and Boito’s version differs substantially from the Shakespeare’s original. When working on Otello, Niermeyer was accompanied by the set designer Christian Schmidt, a regular theatrical partner of Claus Guth. She invited Schmidt to Vienna as well, relying completely on the German artist’s talent – like many other contemporary directors guided by a wholly mistaken premise that what the audiences look for at the opera are, above all, visual thrills.

Unfortunately, Schmidt limited himself to shamelessly recycling his earlier ideas from Guth’s productions. He arranged the entire space – bringing to mind neither a forest lake, nor the Prince’s castle, nor any other fairy tale reality – using the tried and tested model from the Salzburger Festspiele Così fan tutte, complementing the quarter-turn staircase and white wall panels with elements from the Paris Rigoletto (a club-style cubicle behind a curtain, a roller door covering the interior of the sets). The rustling rushes were borrowed from the La Scala Lohengrin and the Glyndebourne La clemenza di Tito. The huge crystal chandelier, the presence of which was to mark a passage from the world of forest spirits to the world of humans, was brought straight from the Salzburg Fidelio; literally – I bet any sum it was the same stage prop. The shallow pool in lieu of a lake – in which for some reason the wedding guests in Act II splash around as well – was tested for the first time in the Dresden staging of Salome directed by Peter Mussbach.

In this universal Kunstkammer of postmodernist theatre Niermeyer presented just one narrative thread, justifying all inconsistencies with an equally universal interpretative device – that everything was going on in the protagonist’s mind. Her Rusalka is quite a modern girl who is terribly scared of her own femininity and falls victim to complex manipulation on the part of the other protagonists forcing her to become a sexual object. The transformation of a demonic creature into a woman consists in her deflowering by Ježibaba. Vodnik turns out to be a bastard who loses power over his own daughter and, frustrated, pushes her into the arms of another man, fully aware of the suffering that will result from his impulsive decision. In the finale Rusalka must forgive not only the Prince, but also her father, who will realise too late the consequences of his patriarchal attitude. Gone is the whole symbolism of Kvapil’s story, but what is missing above all is a reversal of the fairy tale order of things: a bloodcurdling story of a nymph who lets herself be fatally beguiled by a man.

Günther Groissböck (Vodnik) and Maria Bengtsson. Photo: Herwig Prammer

Fortunately, wonderful musical thrills were there. The acoustics of the Theater ad der Wien provide singers with an opportunity to subtly play with voice colour, dynamics and expression, which was fully taken advantage of by Maria Bengtsson as Rusalka – she sang in a crystal clear and beautifully sounding soprano, successfully avoiding the temptation of forcing the volume at the expense of the logic and flow of phrasing. She found an excellent partner in Günther Groissböck as Vodnik – the artist combines a phenomenal technique and extraordinary beauty of a supple, velvety bass with exceptional sensitivity and intelligence in constructing his character (the stunning monologue “Celý svět nedá ti, nedá” in Act II and the triple “Běda!” in the finale: the first sung neutrally, the second in a faltering voice, the third in a helpless fury). Ladislav Elgr (the Prince) was disappointing. He has a lovely tenor with a clear spinto “steel” in it, but he does not know how to handle it: all the missed top notes and sudden changes of colour in the registers result from a complete lack of breath control, which may soon lead to serious vocal problems. On the other hand the three Wood Sprites (Ilona Revolskaya, Mirella Hagen and Tatiana Kuryatnikova) were phenomenal, dazzling in the ensembles not only with their perfect harmony but also beauty of their voices. Casting the rather spiritless Kate Aldrich as the Foreign Princess and Natascha Petrinsky – with her ugly, worn out mezzo-soprano – as Ježibaba destroyed the symmetry between the two characters, indented as two sides of the same sinister force.

Günther Groissböck. Photo: Herwig Prammer

The Arnold Schoenberg Chor emerged as a collective hero of the evening, using the limited possibilities to shine provided by the score to the full, impressive in its excellent diction, perfect voice production and masterful use of dynamics. The orchestra had its moments of weakness, especially in the brass, but it made up for them with its ability to differentiate the texture – this was largely thanks to David Afkham, a young German conductor, who led the performance, using quite slow tempi, but without losing the pulse for a moment and bringing out unexpected “modernist” touches, which usually disappear in too heavily played chords.

Grumblers whinge that the allegedly conservative music of Rusalka cannot compare to Kvapil’s inventive libretto full of hidden meanings as it is. Yet Niermayer’s derivative, dramaturgically botched production was saved primarily by its musical layer. It was only in the finale that I felt the atmosphere of real theatre: when Rusalka had left and the devastated Vodnik remained alone on stage, rocking a memory of his daughter in his empty arms.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

It’s been nearly twenty years since the autumn review of cultural highlights, organised under the aegis of Berliner Festspiele, grew so much that it had to be divided into several separate strands. The new music festival, under a working name of Konzerte/Oper, was launched in 2004, still in the HBF building, which hosted the concerts, alternating as the festival venue with the chamber hall of the Philhamonie. One year later the event acquired its current name, Musikfest Berlin. In 2006 it underwent another metamorphosis: into a three-week marathon organised in close collaboration with the Berlin Philharmonic Foundation and focused primarily on orchestral music. The man appointed new director of the festival was Winrich Hopp – historian of philosophy, musicologist specialising in Stockhausen’s oeuvre, member of the Nordrhein-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste, since 2011 also in charge of the Munich cycle Musica Viva, organised under the auspices of Bayerischer Rundfunk.

From the very beginning Hopp did not hide his fascination with the orchestra, alongside theatre and opera – and then also cinema – one of the most powerful and most complex “cultural machineries” of the modern West. The programmes of the Berlin festivals are still constructed in defiance of the Philharmonie regulars, but the director strives to keep up with the tendencies to be found on the world music scene. He moves the boundaries very carefully in order not to put off “ordinary” music lovers. This year he focused on, among others, the anniversary of Berlioz’s death, and among ensembles traditionally invited to the Musikfest from outside Berlin he evidently favoured British orchestras – with a clear intention of stressing that the musical heritage of the United Kingdom had been an integral part of European culture and could not be squandered in the brouhaha surrounding Brexit. Both these strands were harmoniously combined in the inaugural evening featuring Benvenuto Cellini performed by the soloists, Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. I could not have missed such a treat and as it was followed by a few other operatic-theatrical rarities, I decided to stay in Berlin a little longer.

John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Photo: Adam Janisch

Berlioz’s first opera has not had an easy life on stage. The libretto by Léon de Wailly and Auguste Barbier, initially written for an opéra comique, was rejected on the spot by the company based in Paris’ Salle Favart. After removing the spoken dialogues and making numerous corrections that were to make the text more coherent dramatically, the librettists transformed Benvenuto Cellini into an opéra semi-sérieux and submitted it for approval to Henri Duponchel, the then director of the Paris Opera. One year later, in 1836, Berlioz began composing. The censors intervened already during rehearsals, demanding that Pope Clement VII be replaced with Cardinal Salviati (although both Salviati brothers were made cardinals long after the period in which the action of the opera takes place, this must have been regarded as a mere trifle given the general inconsistency of the libretto). The premiere in September 1838 was a fiasco – despite the fact that the title role was sung by the famous Gilbert Duprez and the conductor was no less a figure than François Habeneck. The work – brimming with melodic invention and original orchestration ideas like the goldsmith’s crucible in Act II – was greeted by the audience with hissing and general commotion. In 1852, on Liszt’s initiative and after a thorough revision of the score by the composer, Cellini was staged in Weimar – without much success, just as in London some time later. Interest in this masterpiece began to rise gradually, although still tentatively, more or less half a century ago.  Benvenuto Cellini returned to the stage of Covent Garden in 1966 – together with the now uncensored Pope Clement. Perhaps the opera would have been completely forgotten, if it had not been for the overture, performed as a stand-alone piece, and Le carnaval romain, a work composed six years later in which Berlioz used some material from Act I.

Two years after the famous tour with three Monteverdi operas Gardiner returned to the Philharmonie in better form than ever. The huge orchestra – with an expanded percussion section, four harps, four bassoons, two guitars, cor anglais and ophicleide, included in the source text – wowed the listeners with the richness of its colours and abruptness of rhythmic changes from the very first bars of the overture. Every ensemble, every chorus scene heralded the future greatness of Les Troyens. In all respects and in the best sense of the word, the music of Benvenuto Cellini turned out to be “excessive”: glittering, brimming with energy, striking with its typically Berliozian harmonic turns, especially in the truly revolutionary and romantic take by the British musicians presenting a version edited by Gardiner himself.

Yet all their efforts would have been in vain, if it had not been for the sensational cast. Michael Spyres shone like a jewel as Cellini. He is a truly “French” heroic tenor with an incredibly wide range, boasting an almost baritonal bottom register and a light, very resonant top. His ardour in “Ma dague en main” and dazzling lyricism in “Sur les monts les plus sauvages” in Act II were something Duprez himself could have envied – after all, he essentially failed in his take on the fiendishly difficult part of the Florentine goldsmith and withdrew already from the third performance after the premiere. It would be hard to decide which of the female voices deserved the highest praise: the passionate and very musical Sophia Burgos in the soprano role of Teresa or the velvety-voiced and beautifully phrasing mezzo-soprano Adèle Charvet in the trouser role of Ascanio – all the more so that both singers were impressive in their perfect mutual understanding in the inspired duet “Rosa purpurea”. The Belgian baritone Lionel Lhote as the jealous Fieramosca demonstrated not only his acting skills but also phenomenal technique. The same could be said of Tareq Nazmi, a highly cultured singer with a beautiful bass voice, who was brilliant as the pretentious pope, clearly confused by the sudden move from carnival to Lent. In fact, each role was a gem – and as there were many of them, let me just mention the splendid and very stylish Maurizio Muraro, who at the last minute stepped in for Matthew Rose in the demanding part of Balducci.

Huge praise should also go to the creative team, headed by the Israeli Noa Naamat, Jette Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden. I cannot imagine a better school for talented young opera directors than working with Gardiner, who demands from the creative teams of his staged concerts at least as much precision and care as from his musicians. Naamat entrusted complex but at the same time logical acting tasks not just to soloists and every member of the chorus, but also to individual orchestral musicians and… the conductor himself.  Instead of heavy antics on the proscenium we saw a lively, witty performance – in simple but clear costumes (Sarah Denise Cordery) and lighting (Rick Fisher) that aptly highlighted the narrative. This production of Benvenuto Cellini went straight from Berlin to the Proms and then to the Royal Opera of Versailles. I did not think I would see the day when semi-staged evenings would bring me more joy than “true” opera performances.

Die Frau ohne Schatten. Ildikó Komlósi (Nurse). Photo: Monika Karczmarczyk

Completely different emotions were generated by a concert performance of Die Frau ohne Schatten by the Rundfunkchor, Staatsoper’s children’s chorus, RSB orchestra and a large group of soloists conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. This time the loudest applause was earned by the various ensembles and the conductor. As I have already written elsewhere, Richard Strauss’ beloved operatic child of woe, to which he fondly referred using the acronym “Frosch” (“Frog”), deserves the title of the most convoluted narrative in the history of the composer’s collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal.  It has literally everything, from loose inspiration by Wilhelm Hauff’s fairy tale Das kalte Herz and fragments of Goethe’s The Conversations of German Refugees, through references to his other works, including Wilhelm Meister, part two of Faust and Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil, to One Thousand and One Nights and the Grimm brothers’ Fairy Tales. And all this can be heard in the music, as erudite as it is ethereally beautiful. In order to cope with the demands of this masterpiece, we need an experienced and very imaginative kapellmeister, disciplined choirs, very capable orchestra and at least six outstanding soloists.

Unfortunately, the most important among the protagonists: the Emperor, the Empress and (to a lesser extent) the Nurse were disappointing. Anne Schwanewilms never commanded a beautiful soprano voice – as years went by, the ugly timbre began to be compounded by problems with voice production, “thinning” of the middle register and shrill top notes, particularly difficult to endure in Act III, when the singing has to cut through a very dense orchestral texture. Torsten Kerl sang his role merely correctly and with no imagination – what is worse, he wavered at “Falke, Falke, die Wiedergefundener”, destroying one of the most magical moments in the history of opera. Ildikó Komlósi’s mezzo-soprano had betrayed signs of serious wear and tear already two years before in Bluebeard’s Castle in Katowice – but like then, this time, too, the singer masked an imprecise intonation and uncontrolled vibrato by excellent phrasing and brilliant acting. Judging by the audience’s reaction – quite effectively.

In such a situation – paradoxically – beautiful voices and subtle interpretation were to be found in “ordinary” characters of the Dyer’s Wife (superb Ricarda Merbeth) and Barak (even better Thomas J. Mayer), not to mention the finely sung roles of the One-Eyed Man, the One-Armed Man and the Hunchback (Jens Larsen, Christian Oldenburg and Tom Erik Lie). Another memorable performance came from Yasushi Hirano (Messenger of Keikobad), a full sounding baritone with an excellent lower register. The performances of the other soloists varied. I also have to admit that I doubts about casting a countertenor to sing the Guardian of the Threshold – even if his voice is as ringing and well-placed as Andrey Nemzer’s.

To put together a good cast for Die Frau ohne Schatten verges on the impossible, so perhaps I should not complain, although in my opinion more courageous casting choices would not have been amiss. Fortunately, Strauss’ work resembles at times a very complex symphonic poem, which Jurowski conducted with incredible panache, using surprisingly sharp tempi, with the intricate orchestral texture pulsating with a lively rhythm of two interpenetrating worlds – the land of human beings and the tonally unstable sphere of fairy tale creatures. The reactions of the Berlin audience were beyond belief – the listeners followed the complex narrative perched on the edge of their seats, accompanied the soloists singing along voicelessly and at the end exploded in rapturous applause. Strauss’ Sorgenkind finally grew to become a beautiful swan.

I have devoted more room to operatic events from the first few days of the Musikfest, which does not mean that there was nothing to enthuse about during a recital by Alexander Melnikov, who presented a programme of Rossini’s charming ditties and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in Liszt’s transcription, playing a finely restored concert Érard from the 1880s. The Russian pianist impresses with his musicality and plays with a very light hand, “above” the keyboard, as it were, which irritates the purists, but which most listeners, including myself, find absolutely inoffensive. His wonderful ability to shape musical landscapes more than made up for a few missed notes.

What proved to be a rather nice surprise was an evening with one of my favourite orchestras (Concertgebouw) under one of my least favourite conductors (Tugan Sokhiev). It turned out that in a programme featuring a composition well known to the musicians (German premiere of Andriessen’s Mysteriën) and a piece quite close to the kapellmeister (Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1) Sokhiev was much better than Daniele Gatti, who two years before, conducting the same orchestra, horribly massacred Bruckner’s Ninth. On top of that Sokhiev was amazingly good in the encore, an excerpt from Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1. Another proof that one has to fight one’s prejudices.

Okutsu Kentarō as the Thunder God in Kaminari. Photo: Adam Janisch

As a farewell to Muskfest I treated myself to an evening with the Japanese Nō theatre by the Tokyo company Umewaka Kennōkai led by Manzaburō Umewaka III called Makio – representing the fourteenth generation of a family of actors continuing the tradition of the Kanze school, founded in the 14th century by Master Kan’ami Kiyotsugu. The artists presented three plays: The Ghost of the Rice Wine (Shōjō – Midare/Sō no mai), a ceremonial dance show with elements of the kyōgen farce; The Thunder God (Kaminari), or a comic kyōgen intermezzo; and The Deadweight of Love (Koi no Omoni) – one of the most famous works by Motokiyo Zeami, 14th-century playwright and Nō theorist – featuring Makio himself as the spirit of a dead gardener, who fell unhappily in love with a lady-in-waiting and was cruelly humiliated by her. I have always been fascinated by Nō theatre as “sung” drama – in the characteristic septuple metre of classical Japanese poetry, with a chorus and four-member instrumental ensemble, hayashi, comprising three percussionists and a musician playing the nokhan flute. However, its most intriguing element is the invariability of the convention, cultivated for nearly six hundred years – which naturally encourages comparisons with the convention of European opera, frequently said to be doomed, which for young spectators with no links to the tradition may prove as hermetic as the plays by Kan’ami and Zeami.

I last talked to Winrich Hopp six years ago, when Musikfest focused on the oeuvre of Lutosławski and Britten. He told at the time that he believed both in the young and in tradition. That no matter what happened to music, he would accompany it. It is nice to see that there are still people who can keep their promises.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

I read the first part of Arthur Rubinstein’s memoirs – My Young Years – shortly after they were published in Poland, that is more or less at the height of my own “Wagnerian fever”. This may be the reason why I have such a vivid recollection of Rubinstein’s youthful fascination with Emmy Destinn, the debacle of his collaboration – perhaps even love affair – with the Czech soprano, lean days in Berlin and failed suicide attempt, when he tried to hang himself on a belt from a hotel dressing gown. After all these disasters Rubinstein was taken under the wings of Józef Jaroszyński, a rich landowner, bon vivant and amateur musician, whom Rubinstein had met earlier through the Wertheim family. Jaroszyński generously gave the pianist four thousand roubles, which Rubinstein decided to splurge on a tour of Europe in the company of Paweł Kochański and his benefactor. When they were staying in Karlsbad, Józef imprudently boasted to Arthur that he had got a ticket to a performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth. When Rubinstein realised that his friend had not the slightest intention of relinquishing this treasure to him, he flew into a rage. The following pages of the memoirs are taken up with a dramatic tale of his attempts to get a ticket for himself ending with the purchase of an admission card confiscated by the police from the local “touts”. A few days later Rubinstein behaved exactly like Jaroszyński: instead of giving a ticket to another performance of Parsifal to a desperate “Basia”, i.e. Joanna Wertheim, he kept her in suspense until he finally managed to get one more card – this time free, in Cosima Wagner’s box, for a fictitious Otto Schultz, a name assigned to a small reserve pool of tickets to be used “in emergency”.

This was in 1908, in the first season of Siegfried Wagner’s reign. Parsifal was conducted by Karl Muck, whose recordings, made twenty years later, still constitute a point of reference for most lovers of this masterpiece, myself included. A lot has changed since then on the Green Hill: Bayreuth has lost its monopoly on staging Parsifal, the shrine of Wagnerian tradition has turned into an experimental lab for luminaries of Regieoper, and ardent music lovers are increasingly replaced by rich snobs. What has remained is the cavernous orchestra pit, almost completely hidden under the stage, the famous wooden tip-up seats on which it is hard to sit through a performance – all the more so given that the auditorium is neither ventilated nor air-conditioned – and the aura of inaccessibility still surrounding the Festival. It was cultivated in the editorial team of Ruch Muzyczny by Józef Kański – the only regular at the proud Festspielhaus among us. For many years I did not have the courage to follow in his footsteps. I changed my mind, when I saw the cast of this year Parsifal, nearly identical and just as encouraging as in the previous season. Having looked at my calendar, I also decided to apply for accreditation for the second performance of Lohengrin. A confirmation soon came and I felt almost like Rubinstein with a free ticket for the non-existent Otto Schultz.

Tannhäuser, Act 3. Stephen Gould in the title role, and Lise Davidsen as Elisabeth. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

Shortly before my departure for Bayreuth I presented two broadcasts on the Polish Radio 2 with Marcin Majchrowski: of this year’s premiere of  Tannhäuser and first performance of Lohengrin. After the inaugural evening I was left astonished that Tannhäuser could be conducted as gracelessly, sloppily and without a sense of style as it was done by Valery Gergiev, and genuinely delighted with the performance of Lise Davidsen, making her Bayreuth debut as Elisabeth. I also have a vague feeling that I want to see Tobias Kratzer’s staging live – despite the fact that his Götterdämmerung in Karlsruhe really enraged me and his La forza del destino in Frankfurt irritated me with its contrived interpretation made to suit a preconceived thesis. In Lohengrin the chorus and the orchestra underwent a sudden, though expected, change under Christian Thielemann’s baton. The soloists were a mixed bag: the otherwise excellent Camilla Nylund, stepping in for Krassimira Stoyanova as Elsa at a short notice, was disappointing, and listening to Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role was like Chinese torture. I have been wondering for years about the source of admiration for this Wagnerian tenor, who, against all performance traditions, sings most of the role using voce mista and falsetto, without proper support, with a voice that is harmonically poor and quite simply tired. I had seen Yuval Sharon’s production on video, so I had my doubts whether I really wanted to experience all this in Bayreuth and with the same cast at that.

As it turned out, I should not have worried. Nylund withdrew after the first performance and was replaced by Anette Dasch, Jonas Kaufmann’s partner in several productions of Lohengrin, a singer with a soprano which is fairly small in size but beautiful in colour and “fragile” enough for Elsa. Much to my surprise I found that the volume of Vogt’s voice was much bigger than the recordings suggested; the singer is also a very efficient actor. Which does not change the fact that his voice is a screaming (sometimes also literally) antithesis of the Wagnerian Heldentenor – especially when combined with the singer’s penchant for rigid, strangely chanted phrasing which could not in no way be compensated by his excellent diction. The ever reliable Georg Zeppenfeld created a very convincing portrayal of Henry the Fowler, while Elena Pankratova – whom I had had an opportunity to admire as Leonora in Fidelio in Bilbao – coped brilliantly with the fiendishly difficult role of Ortrud, this time avoiding occasional lapses in intonation on the highest notes, which had marred her performance a bit during the first evening. I continue to have a problem with Telramund as portrayed by Tomasz Konieczny: our fine bass-baritone is increasingly prone to booming singing, devoid of dynamic nuances, and forced – which often affects the beauty of his sound. Nor was I enraptured by the voice, rather “short” at the bottom, of Egils Siliņš in the quite substantial part of Herald. The whole thing was brilliantly controlled by Thielemann, although, as I have said on other occasions, I prefer interpretations of Wagner that are less expansive, pulsate more lively and seek internal variety of texture rather than overwhelming beauty of chords.

The hybrid staging by Sharon, who had to adapt his vision to the already made sets and costumes by Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, still remains fractured – despite some directorial corrections in comparison with last year’s version. Its greatest asset is the overall visual concept, clearly dominated by Rauch, who breaks fairy tale, sometimes even expressionistic, landscapes with “industrial” elements bringing to mind the aesthetics of socialist realism. The grotesque costumes, lights and extraordinary colours of the sets suggest that the source of inspiration was the famous Delft pottery – with its refined palette of subdued shades of blue, blurred greys and warm violets, against which the bright orange stands out all the more strongly in the wedding night scene. The surrealist beauty of these ideas cannot be conveyed by any video recording: the beginning of Act II, with a blurred outline of a transformer which emerges from gloomy mists and fumes like the Thrushcross Grange from some post-apocalyptic vision of Wuthering Heights, literally takes your breath away. Sharon loses his way in this landscape, trying to put together two incompatible elements: a mysterious visitor restoring energy to a community plunged into darkness, and female force opposing patriarchy.  To be honest, not much comes from all this, but there are a few very memorable scenes; for example, adding ordinary brushwood to a pyre meant for Elsa and constructed out of useless transformer coils – a clear symbol of losing control over a world that has ceased to be understood. I still believe that new successive corrections will enable Sharon to put this staging on the right track: to make it even more unreal, clear it of any unnecessary journalistic appendages, focus on the ambiguous relations between the characters.

Klaus Florian Vogt as Lohengrin. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

The preparations for the premiere of Parsifal in 2016 (the production will close after this season) were marked by a scandal. The director Uwe Eric Laufenberg was a last-minute replacement for the Berlin-based performer Jonathan Meese – whose contract was terminated apparently because of budgetary considerations – and he brought with him a stage concept initially devised for the Cologne Opera. The production aroused mixed feelings. Laufenberg, known for his penchant for referring to pressing problems of the present in his productions, was accused on the one hand of Islamophobia and on the other – of scandalous offence against religious feelings of Christians. Fans of the previous vision, by Herheim, who in his Parsifal took apart Germany’s history, found it too conventional, traditionalists – too extravagant.

Yet it is an exceptionally successful Regietheater production. In Laufenberg’s vision Parsifal is paradoxically spot-on when it comes to the intentions of Richard Wagner, who decided to create a musical treatise on redemption and liberation from suffering. This sometimes requires – to invoke the words of Schopenhauer – that the existing order of the world be overcome and annihilated.  Laufenberg has noticed that in his Parsifal Wagner explores the experience of all religiosity and thus goes beyond the narrow framework of worship. In order for faith to be saved, ritual must be annihilated. The director is very consistent in putting his idea into practice and his production is technically masterful. Act I of Parsifal is set in a ruined church which, despite clear references to the present, bears a strange resemblance to the ornamentless sets of the Grail Castle in Paul von Joukowsky’s premiere stage design (sets by Gisbert Jäkel, costumes by Jessica Karge, lighting by Reinhard Traub, video by Gérard Naziri). The image brings to mind both the theatre of war in the Middle East and the Trapist monastery in Tibhirine, where in 1996 seven monks were murdered, a crime that still remains a mystery (the “Algerian” theme is highlighted by Gurnemanz made to look like Brother Luc, a doctor who ran a clinic in Tibhirine open to patients of all denominations). Into this space, nearly completely abandoned years later and slowly reclaimed by nature, the director introduced the narrative of Act III. He placed Klingsor’s castle in Act II – like in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epos – in the “Kingdom of Persis”: a residence of a contemporary Oriental magnate dripping with ornaments and full of women.

All these locations are temples of distorted rituals: the Grail Knights deliberately open up Amfortas’ wound in order to receive the body and blood of a “substitute” Christ. Titurel watches over the ceremony like a cruel God the Father, as it were.  Klingsor is a figure of all fanaticism: he prays ardently towards Mecca, only to flagellate himself in a room full of crucifixes a moment later. Longing for salvation, Kundry vacillates among various incarnations, but in each on them she shows more compassion than those whom she desperately leads into temptation. Parsifal really arrives out of nowhere, lugging a swan pierced with an arrow; the swan – although dead – seems to be more alive than members of the brotherhood closed in their doctrine.  Redemption by the transformed Parsifal occurs through the death of ritual: not religion but its paraphernalia, placed by all believers in Titurel’s coffin in the finale. Parsifal slams them shut with a stone – so that they would not resurrect, so that they would allow true faith to be reborn: into a world without unnecessary suffering and needless pain.

Parsifal, Act 3. Andreas Schager (Parsifal), Elena Pankratova (Kundry), and Günther Groissböck (Gurnemanz). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

Laufenberg has created a coherent modern mystery play, brilliantly combined with music under Semyon Bychkov’s assured and sensitive baton. The eponymous hero was portrayed very expressively by Andreas Schager, a singer with a ringing and powerful tenor, with a clearly defined Wagnerian “steel”, although occasionally with a too wide vibrato in the middle register. What I missed a bit in the performance of Derek Welton (Klingsor) was demonic element, which should be an essential quality of a fallen angel tormented by temptation. On the other hand, the delicate, plaintive bass-baritone of Ryan McKinny was very well suited to the figure of Amfortas, and the imperious, mature bass of Wilhelm Schwinghammer – to the ominous figure of his father Titurel. I do not know whether there is another singer in the world capable of revealing the changeable faces of the tormented Kundry with the sensitivity and passion of Elena Pankratova – an artist with a voice of quite extraordinary beauty, perfectly controlled across all registers, shimmering with the colours of all the incarnations of the sinner condemned to eternal wandering. What I heard in the singing of Günther Groissböck as Gurnemanz – who evolves from a detached narrator in Act I into an ecstatic harbinger of redemption in Act III – will be hard to put into words. Something strange was happening to me – as it was the case with Rubinstein, who cried through most of the 1908 performance. It’s been years since I encountered such a cultured performance, such a beautiful voice – bringing to mind Hans Hotter’s velvety bass-baritone – and such a feeling for the stage. The decision to entrust the role of Wotan/Wanderer to this artist in a new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen next year will probably turned out to be one the best decisions in the post-war history of the Festival.

I left Bayreuth in a mood similar to that of Rubinstein and Kochański over one hundred years earlier: “shaken by this genius, this Wagner”. After what I experienced there I am inclined to forgive his descendants everything – even the hard wooden seats and lack of ventilation.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

In June 1869, Cosima bore Siegfried – the third child of her non-marital relationship with Wagner – and sent a letter to her husband, yet again imploring him to grant her a divorce. Hans von Bülow finally gave in: ‘You have decided to devote the treasure of your heart and mind to a higher being. I have no intention of condemning you for same.’ What ensued was probably the happiest period in the longtime lovers’ lives. The divorce proceedings were completed in July 1870; one month later, Cosima and Richard were married. Shortly thereafter, the composer decided to give his wife a surprise: he sat down to write the piece that awakened her from her sleep at the Tribschen villa near Lucerne on the morning of 25 December, the day after Cosima’s birthday. Musicians from the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – thirteen of them – gathered on the staircase and played a symphonic poem with the monstrously long title of Tribschener Idyll mit Fidi-Vogelgesang und Orange-Sonnenaufgang, als Symphonischer Geburtstagsgruss. Seiner Cosima dargebracht von Ihrem Richard, known today as the Siegfried Idyll. Initially, Wagner had no intention of publishing it; however, financial pressures induced him to do so at the Schott music publishers, expanding the ensemble to 35 instruments.

The Siegfried Idyll has entered the standard concert repertoire as Wagner’s only original work for chamber orchestra. Later arrangements – prepared by, among others, conductor Felix Mottl and composer Hans Werner Henze – have normally limited themselves to shorter instrumental fragments of his operas, or to orchestral takes on the Wesendonck Lieder, which were originally scored for voice and piano. When rumours reached my ears concerning an initiative of the Scottish ensemble Mahler Players, which – after the warm reception of their Mahler in Miniature series comprised of, among other items, a chamber version of Das Lied von der Erde – had decided to take on Wagner, at first I thought they were totally out of their minds; then I listened to a few of their previous recordings online, at which point, without further ado, I set forth on a mad journey to Inverness: to a concert in which conductor and ensemble founder Tomas Leakey juxtaposed Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht with Act I of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Tomas Leakey. Photo: Mahler Players

Schoenberg’s early work, initially written for string sextet, is most often heard today in the composer’s 1943 revised version for string orchestra. In the rendition of Mahler Players, it would thus not have been anything noteworthy if Leakey had not connected Schoenberg’s inspiration from a poem by Richard Dehmel (describing the journey of two lovers through a dark forest, during which the woman reveals to her beloved that she is pregnant with someone else’s child) with the equally dark narrative of Die Walküre (where Siegmund, freshly arrived from the backwoods, enters into an incestuous relationship with his twin sister Sieglinde, with whom he begets Siegfried, a hero unblemished by evil who will change the fate of the gods). The conductor treated the audience to a few introductory words before the concert and, in the second portion, transitioned smoothly from a sensual and tender interpretation of Verklärte Nacht to the stormy beginning of Wagner’s drama – in a masterful arrangement by Matthew King and Peter Longworth, who in some mysterious way managed not to degrade the expressive power of this substantial score, despite a reduction by nearly three quarters of the original ensemble. Even more noteworthy, the soloists (Peter Wedd in the role of Siegmund; Claire Rutter as Sieglinde; and actor/singer/performance artist Iestyn Edwards, normally associated with a totally different repertoire, in the role of Hunding), did not convey the impression of being inhibited by the more intimate take on Die Walküre – they sang with full voices, totally involved in their characters, and not even for a moment giving the audience any reason to suppose that they are taking part in some weird and not-entirely-justified endeavour.

After the concert at the Inverness cathedral. From left to right: Tomas Leakey, Peter Wedd (Siegmund), Iestyn Edwards (Hunding) and Claire Rutter (Sieglinde). Photo: Mahler Players

Actually, they were more than convinced of what they were doing. Since the beginning of the ensemble’s existence – it was founded in 2013 – Tomas Leakey and his instrumentalists have been continuing a wonderful tradition of musical work at the grass roots. They have been introducing the inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands, one of Europe’s most sparsely-populated regions, to the world of classical music with no concessions, immediately taking on masterpieces of the highest order, engaging soloists who score successes at the best opera houses, independently preparing themselves for the work painstakingly, thoroughly and with fantastic artistic results. And in return, they have received a generous reward: the Neogothic cathedral in Inverness was packed to the gills; the performance was received with shouts of rapture and lengthy standing ovations. The artists encountered an equally warm reception the previous day at St. Giles’ Church in Elgin, and the day after at the Macphail Centre in Ullapool – a fishing port numbering slightly over 1000 inhabitants that also hosts, among other cultural events, an annual three-day book festival. In past seasons, the Mahler Players have ventured into even less accessible corners of northern Scotland – with music by their namesake, with a chamber version of Dvořák’s New World Symphony, with orchestral excerpts from Parsifal. In the coming years they are planning, among other events, concerts with Act III of Siegfried, Act II of Tristan und Isolde, and a symphony based on themes from Wagner’s late sketches, commissioned from Matthew King. They have no great difficulty finding partners and sponsors for their projects; after six years of activity, there is no doubt that their initiatives will encounter the enthusiasm of an audience hungry for new experiences.

I dedicate this short report to some organizers of our musical life, who stubbornly hold to the thesis that the only way to popularize this artistic field is to organize operetta galas, tenor tournaments and super-productions with large outdoor screens and stadium amplification. For connoisseurs, on the other hand, they offer summer festivals featuring foreign artists who – for a generous fee – will agree to return from a prestigious concert tour via a roundabout route through Poland.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

This is yet another June that I am spending with Wagner’s music: more and more intensively from year to year, since the first Tristan in Longborough (put on for the 150^th anniversary of the world première), because I have been deliberately following the singers who have been making their entrée into the world of the master of Bayreuth under the watchful care of Anthony Negus. This time, as a prelude to the new staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen under his baton, I decided to head to Konzert Theater Bern for a Tristan featuring Lee Bisset, a phenomenal Isolde in the 2017 revival of the Longborough Festival Opera’s production, as well as Swedish tenor Daniel Frank, whom I was not able to see in the last year’s Götterdämmerung in Karlsruhe – which I regretted enormously at the time, for he had sounded very promising in recordings. The Bern opera house, furthermore, has a beautiful Wagnerian tradition: the Neo-Baroque building designed by René von Wurstemberger was inaugurated in 1903 with a presentation of Tannhäuser; and the Swiss première of Tristan took place in March 1889 at the Hôtel de Musique, the theatre’s previous headquarters which were demolished at the beginning of the 20^th century.

I traveled to Switzerland full of the highest hopes: the stage-directing concept was the responsibility of Ludger Engels, a thoroughly-educated German musician who took a turn in the direction of theatre at the instigation of distinguished conductor and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart founder Helmuth Rilling. Since the mid-1990s, Engels has directed over 30 opera productions, including a Minimalist, relatively well-received staging of Tristan und Isolde for Theater Aachen (2012). If I had read the reviews of that production more carefully, a red light would have gone on in my head. For even critics immune to the extravagances of German Regieoper pointed out the lack of any relationships between the title characters, accusing the director of treating Tristan too literally as an idea drama. In Bern, Engels went all the way and transfigured Wagner’s masterpiece into a multileveled theatre-in-a-theatre, referring to the work of Berlin performance artist Jonathan Meese. Perhaps readers remember that in 2014, Meese was supposed to prepare a new staging of Parsifal in Bayreuth. The Festival management finally dissolved their contract with him, officially citing the endeavour’s excessively high cost. Behind the scenes, it was whispered that the problem was rather the artist’s predilection for the Nazi ‘Heil Hitler’ gesture, for the use of which – in his performance art work entitled Größenwahn in der Kunstwelt, presented at the documenta exhibition – Meese faced charges at the Regional Court in Kassel. He won the case and did not abandon his controversial practices. Frankly, his artistic performances border on chutzpah: a certain critic even christened him the a Borat of contemporary art.

Tristan und Isolde at the Konzert Theater Bern. Daniel Frank (Tristan) and Robin Adams (Kurwenal). Photo: Christian Kleiner

This did not, however, prevent Engels from characterizing Tristan as Jonathan Meese, supplying him with three Isoldes (one singing, supposedly a metaphor of Mathilde Wesendonck; and two silent: Wagner’s first wife Minna, that is, his past love; and his future companion Cosima, whom he for unknown reasons posed as a cross between Lady Gaga and Klaus Nomi); and trashing the stage with oodles of props which, to the initiated, brought to mind the art of the German scandalmonger, but reminded probably no one of Wagner’s drama (stage design: Volker Thiele; costumes: Heide Kastler; lights: Bernhard Bieri). And as if that weren’t enough, he played out each of the three acts in a completely different stylistic language, without drawing them together through any kind of narrative link, and then made the singer playing the roles of the Shepherd and the Young Sailor (Andries Cloete) ‘stage direct’ the whole thing. I shall not undertake any thorough exegesis of Engels’ concept – I shall only report that in the final accounting, no one died (but neither did anyone connect with anyone); and in the final scene, the director did not fail to remind us of Meese’s declaration that ‘Kunst ist totalste Freiheit’. Judging from the uproarious laughter in Act III when Kurwenal asks Tristan, ‘Bist du nun tot? Lebst du noch?’, the audience noticed certain divergences between the libretto and the stage director’s vision.

Unfortunately, the onstage mess affected the quality of the singing. Lee Bisset came out considerably beneath her abilities – while the acting was superb, she sang in a tired voice with excessive vibrato and insecure intonation. Daniel Frank – blessed with a tenor of beautiful timbre and a high degree of musicality – began to lose power already in the middle of Act II, and was not able to build the tension in Tristan’s long death scene. The velvety-voiced Claude Eichenberger (Brangäne), though awkward from an acting standpoint, made a fine impression. Robin Adams shaped the character of Kurwenal solidly, but at times he clearly lost control over the volume of his powerful baritone. The unexpected hero of the evening turned out to be the Berner Symphonieorchester – playing with slightly reduced forces under the baton of their director Kevin John Edusei at quite slow tempi and with a clear, ‘Modernist’ sound. This was a Wagner decidedly closer to the aesthetics of Boulez than – let us say – Thielemann, splendidly adapted to the acoustics of the hall and sufficiently intriguing to draw attention away from the indubitable weaknesses of Ludger Engels’ staging.

I traveled to England with the steadfast conviction that things could only get better. Confident about the musical side of the first part of the Ring in Longborough, I was a bit nervous about the staging concept of Amy Lane – a talented stage director, though not yet very experienced (to date, she has honed her craft above all as an assistant; she has also worked on revivals of, among other items, Kaspar Holten’s take on King Roger for the Sydney Opera House). My fears turned out to be unfounded, though it would be difficult to call the new vision of Das Rheingold innovative. Lane alluded loosely to the legendary Ring staging of Patrice Chéreau – an image of Europe in Industrial Revolution times, a soulless world controlled by lust for profit, eaten away by the cancer of corruption and exploitation. Chéreau ‘bourgeois’ Ring had been, however, extraordinarily clear from a visual standpoint, while Lane did not resist the temptation to complement the economical stage design (Rhiannon Newman Brown) with ubiquitous and sometimes overly literal projections. Some of Tim Baxter’s ideas, however, spoke to the imagination – above all, the Modernist vision of Valhalla, looming in the distance like the silhouette of an unfinished factory.

Das Rheingold at the LFO. Darren Jeffery (Wotan). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

On the other hand, Amy Lane guided the singers in a masterful manner, subtly highlighting the character traits of the protagonists and network of interdependencies in which they are entangled. Her tragic take on Alberich shed new light on the inevitable fall of Wotan – he stumbled into the embrace of evil gradually, motivated at first by humiliation, then by anger and cruelty, finally by overwhelming despair. The death of Fasolt was predictable already at the moment when, nestled in the giant’s embrace, Freia for a split-second returned his caress – thereby giving evidence of the feelings arising between the two of them, which could foil the plans of the gold-hungry Fafner. Loge turned out to be a quintessentially Mephistophelian character: a connoisseur of the nature of gods, dwarves and giants, but at the same time, an enemy of all inhabitants of the mythical world; an ironic mocker who, beneath the mask of a smile, concealed deep contempt for the representatives of all creation. The perverse demigod, who plays a key role in the narrative of Das Rheingold, would have been even more convincing had Lane brought him closer to Goethe’s prototype, instead of giving him traits of the devil from late Romantic takes on Gounod’s opera. It would also have been worthwhile to polish up the differences of proportion between the characters: a Mime who clearly towers over other protagonists disturbs the credibility of the narrative. Some of the fault for this lies with the costume designer (Emma Ryott) – fortunately, much time remains until the closing of the Ring, so there will be opportunity yet to correct minor flaws in the staging.

It is difficult to determine who among the cast deserved the most applause – the surprising, indeed Expressionist Alberich of Mark Stone, blessed with a perfectly-placed and richly-shaded baritone; or the terrifying Loge of Marc Le Brocq, with each phrase chiseled like a laser engraving on marble, luminous and intonationally secure. Darren Jeffery built a surprisingly ‘human’ character of Wotan – with a voice full of melancholy, sometimes trembling in pain, bringing to mind associations with the most subtle performances of the German Lied repertoire. His soft bass-baritone found an ideal counterweight in the sonorous and rounded soprano of Madeleine Shaw (Fricka), which superbly conveyed the quandaries of the father of the gods’ partner entangled in ‘male’ intrigue. Blessed with a sensuous, almost girlish soprano, Marie Arnet portrayed a very convincing Freia; Adrian Dwyer, who has a clear and piercing tenor at his disposal, sang out Mime’s torment in a shocking manner. Out of the two giants, the more memorable for me was the moving Fasolt (Pauls Putnins). It is a bit regretful that the otherwise quite good Froh (Elliot Goldie) ran out of power just before the finale: in the ecstatic phrase ‘Zur Burg führt die Brücke’, the voice of the god of rain should truly shine with the colours of the rainbow. Among the Rhine Maidens, I found material for a future Erda – the dense, overtone-rich contralto of Katie Stevenson (Flosshilde). Meanwhile, the role of the earth-mother goddess was portrayed with bravado by Mae Heydorn – with a voice sufficiently ominous and full of authority to freeze the blood in the veins not only of Wotan.

Loge (Marc Le Brocq), Madeleine Shaw (Fricka) and Elliot Goldie (Froh). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

Every word onstage came out clearly, ideally articulated, linked one with the other into a deeply thought-out and even more deeply-experienced statement. This time, the orchestra under the baton of the dependable Anthony Negus receded, as it were, into the shadows. In reality, it melded with the singers into one essence, a living, pulsating organism in which the motifs intermingled, circulated like lymph beneath the skin, reached to the deepest levels of the musical fabric. The famous prelude began with a hollow E-flat in the double basses, derived from the viscera of ancient existence; it woke up the horns, then the rest of the instruments and, finally, the whole world. Throughout Das Rheingold, Negus dosed the tension gradually, saving up reserves for the finale. Perhaps this is why I was so impressed by Erda’s prophecy and the metamorphosis of the ‘genesis’ motif, which resounds with tragic sorrow and shifts to a minor tonality, only to draw back like a dead wave after the words ‘Alles was ist, endet’, heralding the inevitable return to the status before the beginning.

Everything that will happen over the next few years at Longborough has been hereby reported. All we have to do now is wait for the remaining parts of the Ring and the great summation in 2023.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Resuscitation often ends in the patient being seriously battered and bruised. The sternum breaks, the ribs crack, blood pours into the pleura – a scary list, but no one doubts that inept resuscitation is better than no resuscitation. If it had not been for a musical passion of a lecturer from the University of Göttingen, perhaps Handel’s operas would not have emerged from obscurity. Oskar Hagen, an art historian and amateur musician, became interested in the oeuvre of the Halle master during a long illness. Naturally, he shared his fascination with his wife, the singer Thyra Leisner, and a friend who was a cellist. Everything began with home concerts, fashionable in university circles at the time. Encouraged by their success, Hagen decided to organise something on a larger scale. He produced an edition of Rodelinda and organised the first modern performance of the opera – on 26 June 1920, with a cast featuring university students and lecturers accompanied by musicians of the Akademische Orchestervereinigung conducted by him. These were the beginnings of Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, a cradle of Handel revival, which reached the British Isles only in the 1950s.

There would have been no revival, however, if Hagen hand not adapted Handel’s operatic legacy to the sensitivity of the listeners, brought up for generations on Wagner’s works. He cut the scores of his idol into pieces, rearranged them for a large orchestra, “embellished” the recitatives with instrumental interludes, removed repetitions from da capo arias, transposed the parts written for castratos an octave down and entrusted them to low male voices. This does not change the fact, however, that before the outbreak of the Second World War nineteen Handel operas were revived by German theatres, with no fewer than nine being presented in Göttingen (among them Radamisto, Ottone and Giulio Cesare). In 1943–1953 – with an interval of two years caused by a conflict with the Nazi authorities – music directorship of Händel-Festspiele Göttingen was in the hands of the conductor Fritz Lehmann, an ardent advocate of early music and founder of Berliner Mottetenchor. Since 1981 the Festival has been ruled by British apostles of historical performance: respectively, John Eliot Gardiner, Nicholas McGegan, and since 2011 – Laurence Cummings together with the Managing Director Tobias Wolff.

Fllur Wyn (Esilena) and Erica Eloff (Rodrigo). Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

This season I had an opportunity to come to Göttingen for a longer visit, and I decided to use it and visit the Händel-Festspiele. Unfortunately, I missed a concert performance, apparently excellent, of the oratorio Saul, featuring soloists, NDR Chorus and FestspielOchester conducted by Cummings. I arrived in Göttingen three days later, in time for the auditions of the Festival competition, featuring just five ensembles from Germany, Holland and Switzerland. They were all excellent, which makes it all the more difficult to bridle at the verdict of the jury, which included the Baroque violinist Anne Röhrig, the flautist Maurice Steger and the countertenor Kai Wessel. My sympathies were with the Dutch ensemble Dialogo Antico, not only because of its excellent programme (vocal-instrumental works by Handel, Stradella, Alessandro Scarlatti, Bononcini and Arvo Pärt), but also because of the mature and focused interpretations by the countertenor Toshiharu Nakajima. But the winner was Ensemble Caladrius from Germany, with its charismatic flautist Sophia Schambeck, who displayed undoubted virtuosity in a much more accessible repertoire. It is a pity, though, that all three prizes – Main Prize, Bärenreiter Urtext Prize and the Audience Prize – went to one ensemble. The other finalists deserved at least some kind of consolation prize.

The remaining Festival events were focused on the annual opera premiere at the Deutsches Theater, a Neo-Renaissance building from 1890, which in the mid-twentieth century was eventually transformed into a Sprechtheaterhaus. Since then the building has been resounding with music only once a year, during the Händel-Festspiele. This year it was the turn of Rodrigo, Handel’s first Italian opera, loosely based on the story of Roderic, the last Visigothic king, defeated by the Arabs at the Battle of Jerez de la Frontera. Loosely, because the main theme of the work, the initial title of which was Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, is an inner transformation of the protagonist, who after yet another marital infidelity matures and returns to his beloved although infertile wife Esilena. In between we have everything a Baroque opera should have – desire for revenge, unexpected exchange of partners and several dead bodies. Huge support for the intelligent and occasionally very witty direction by Walter Sutcliffe – who turned Rodrigo into a contemporary warlord battling some shady characters somewhere on the frontier of Western civilisation – was provided by Dorota Karolczak’s sets, perfectly laid out and vividly conveying the labyrinth of nooks and crannies of a dilapidated palace. Interestingly, the sets had been made in the workshops of Poznań’s Teatr Wielki, which should quickly start collaborating with Karolczak directly – as this will be beneficial to the company’s own productions. A separate round of applause is also due to the team of MaskenWerkstatt Schweiz, who so suggestively made up Erica Eloff singing the title role that some audience members could swear they were watching a countertenor.

Almira’s Songbook – Seconda Prat!ca, Queen’s Minstrels. Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

Eloff, who was excellent in portraying her character, was not quite up to the requirements of the role, however – splendid in lyrical fragments, she was disappointing in arias requiring truly masculine bravura and vocal glamour typical of the art of the castratos. Anna Dennis (Florinda) in turn, a singer with a powerful, dark soprano, sometimes made up for technical shortcomings with a large volume. It was a big mistake to cast Evanco as a countertenor. Russell Harcourt fought bravely but unsuccessfully – this is not surprising, because it is a typical en travesti role, written for an agile female soprano with easy top notes. Among the other cast members worthy of note were, especially, Fflur Wyn, a technically phenomenal Esilena, captivating with her golden-hued voice, and Jorge Navarro Colorado (Giuliano), excellent as an actor and singing with a secure and clear tenor. However, the unquestionable hero of the evening – as well as several other Festival events – was the FestspielOrchester conducted by Laurence Cummings. This was yet another piece evidence showing how much can be done by skill, knowledge and passion combined with complete trust in the Kapellmeister. The Göttingen Festival Orchestra features members of Les Arts Florissants, Concerto Köln, Complesso Barocco and other premier league ensembles. Cummings gained his experience as the boss of the London Handel Orchestra and co-founder of the London Handel Players. Their music-making brims with pure joy and authentic, mature love for the legacy of the Festival’s patron.

All these qualities shone even more brightly during a gala concert at St. James’ Church, featuring the French countertenor Christophe Dumaux, whose career has been evolving along quite unexpected lines. Most artists singing falsetto on operatic stages are stars of a few seasons, singers with lovely but harmonically not very rich voices, quickly paling beside fuller, well-handled female voices. Yet Dumaux has been maturing like good wine. He skilfully passes from register to register, sounding like a proper haute-contre at the bottom and shining like a dramatic soprano at the top. He makes a brilliant use of messa di voce, embellishes his arias stylishly and tastefully, and phenomenally builds tension in da capo arias. I will remember his “Ah, stigie larve” as an unrivalled model of the Handelian mad scene; his “Pompe vane di morte” finally convinced me of the greatness of Rodelinda. Dumaux said goodbye to the audience with just one encore: “Cor ingrato” from Rinaldo. I had not returned from a concert so hungry for more for quite some time.

Franziska Fleischanderl (salterio). Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

The remaining Festival events did not carry as much weight for me, which does not mean that they were disappointing. The flautist Dorothea Oberlinger’s recital with Cummings on the harpsichord should serve as an example of how to compile a virtuoso programme of Baroque music with less sophisticated listeners in mind. The performance by the Seconda Prat!ca ensemble, which decided to present a musical portrait of Almira, the protagonist of Handel’s first opera, captivated the listeners with the sensual beauty of Iberian vocal music. The soloists and Coro e Orchestra Ghisleri conducted by Giulio Prandi made up for technical shortcomings with so much enthusiasm that we greeted their performance of Handel’s Dixit Dominus with thunderous applause without any hesitation. Nor did we hesitate before getting up before dawn to get to a concert at 5am and hear how Franziska Fleischanderl welcomes the sun with the delicate sound of the salterio and stories of her extraordinary instrument.

Next year Händel-Festspiele Göttingen will celebrate its centenary. History will come full circle – the organisers are planning a new staging of Rodelinda, from which everything began. It will be interesting to see whether one day they will come up with the idea of reconstructing it in the form devised by Oskar Hagen. Who broke Handel’s ribs, left him badly bruised, but resurrected his oeuvre for good. For the benefit of the whole world.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Had Ismail Pasha managed his court more wisely, perhaps he would not have squandered the power of his country. The grandson of Muhammad Ali, the first khedive of Egypt, continued with panache the work begun by his grandfather: he built thousands of schools, created a dense network of telegraphic and railway connections, modernized the port of Alexandria, and saw to the development of the fine arts, theatre and opera. In 1879, before the sultan of the Ottoman Empire removed him from office on the initiative of the British government, he stated that ‘my country is no longer in Africa; we have become part of Europe.’ Twenty years later, the illustrated edition of the Orgelbrand Encyclopedia mercilessly summed up his extravagance and ambition as follows: ‘in order to salvage at least his own personal fortune, he stopped paying interest on his debts; however, under pressure from European powers acting in defense of his creditors, he yielded to their demands. […] His unsuccessful attempt to conquer Abyssinia (1876) also contributed to the destruction of the appeal that he had possessed once upon a time in Europe because of his supposed civilizational aims.’

We have, above all, advocates of post-colonial theory to thank for the stubborn myth that the operatic œuvre was a luxury good in Egypt, imported on credit with an eye to a small clientele basically not interested in it. In reality, opera began to enter cultural circulation there back at the end of the 18^th century, via travelling troupes making the rounds between Naples, Alexandria and Cairo. The presentations, originally organized with an eye to the Europeans living in the overseas country, gained increasing interest among the local population. The Egyptians demanded the building of new theatres, formed their own ensembles, made adaptations in the spirit of the Arabic tradition. Former muezzin Salamah Hijazi shone in musical adaptations of plays by Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine; European operas were presented in both versions up until the 1920s.

Rafael Rojas (Radamès) and Alexandra Zabala (Aida). Photo: Clive Barda

So it is no wonder that Ismail Pasha decided to inaugurate the operations of the Royal Opera House in Cairo – founded in honour of the Suez Canal opening – with a new work by Verdi, or more precisely, a festive hymn for the occasion. The composer rejected the proposal of the khedive, who in light of this contented himself with a staging of Rigoletto. He had no intention, however, of giving up: shortly thereafter, he placed before Verdi the script of Aida, penned by famous French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. This time, the bait caught. In November 1870, the score was basically ready, but the première was delayed on account of an unfortunate turn in the Franco-Prussian war – the costumes and scenery were stuck in besieged Paris. The first showing of Aida finally took place on Christmas Eve 1871 and was received enthusiastically by the audience – importantly, on the night of the première comprised above all of diplomats, dignitaries and critics, which had the effect of reinforcing the legend of opera’s elite character in Egypt.

Meanwhile, Aida almost immediately gained enormous popularity. Perhaps because, in comparison with Verdi’s earlier experiments, it is a work almost Classical in form, composed to a conventional and exceptionally clear libretto that revolves around the drama of duty – understandable to audiences on both sides of the Mediterranean. Aida’s greatest asset, however, is its music: an ideal marriage of the Italian tradition with French grand opéra, a captivating combination of opulent scenes of war and triumph with almost Impressionist sound painting in the more intimate moments of the narrative. Some complain that Aida lacks dramatic nerve: I adore swimming in the ‘heavenly’ long passages of this score, which is marked by the subtle lyricism of its cantilenas and the sensual softness of its quasi-Oriental orchestral textures.

For this reason, I set out without deliberation for another encounter with the musicians of Opera North, who last season – under the same baton of Sir Richard Armstrong – put on a show of the highest artistry in Strauss’ Salome. This time, my choice fell upon a semi-staged performance of Aida at Sage Gateshead, one of the most functional and acoustically best music centers in the world. The edifice designed by Norman Foster is a masterpiece of so-called organic architecture – it brings to mind a giant cocoon towering over the bank of the River Tyne. Inside it are three separate buildings divided by walls made of a soundproof concrete blend. The entire steel construction is hidden under an asymmetrical, aerodynamic copula made of glass. The main concert hall seating 1650 alludes loosely to the form and proportions of the Wiener Musikverein, to which fact it owes its phenomenal acoustics – warm and selective, despite a quite lengthy reverberation.

Eric Greene (Amonasro), Alexandra Zabala, Rafael Rojas and Alessandra Volpe (Amneris). Photo: Clive Barda

In such conditions and with such a superb ensemble, they successfully approximated the ideal. It had been a long time since I had heard an Aida led by such a sensitive hand, with such respect for the composer’s instructions, with such care taken to diversify the subtle instrumental shades, especially in the strings. The Opera North chorus displayed a similar sensitivity to intonation and to the timbre of each individual note and sonority. In Act I, I was slightly disappointed with Rafael Rojas, an otherwise experienced and very technically proficient tenor. Fortunately, he quickly pulled himself together and erased my so-so impression of Radamès’ romance ‘Celeste Aida’ devoid of brilliance and passion. His beloved found an ideal performer in the person of Alexandra Zabala – a singer blessed with a supremely lyrical and, at the same time, resonant soprano, perfectly balanced throughout the range of Aida’s part. Her sweet, tender pianissimo high C from the aria ‘O patria mia’ will remain in my memory for a long time. A splendid counterweight for the delicate Aida lost in a cruel world was created by Alessandra Volpe in the role of Amneris. Her dense, sensual voice, beautifully open at the top, is placed somewhere between a mezzo-soprano and a dramatic soprano – this singer, who will be performing next season as, among others, Santuzza in Bari and Carmen in Oslo, is worthy of further attention. A highly suggestive Ramfis was created by Petri Lindroos, an ominous, ice-cold bass (superb Judgement scene in Act IV). It was an excellent idea to cast Eric Greene in the role of Amonasro – the American singer has at his disposal a deep, dark-timbred baritone that he wields with uncommon musicality and feel for style.

The semi-staging, prepared by Annabel Arden (director), Joanna Parker (designer and video director), Dick Straker (video designer) and Richard Moore (lighting designer), though quite naturally minimalist, was even so striking at times with its excess of details distracting attention from the musical narrative. The production team decided to transport Aida into the realities of a contemporary conflict, supplementing the acting tasks with projections displayed at the back of the stage that alluded unambiguously to the current war in Syria. A pity, for the singers placed in front of the orchestra were moving in a metaphorical space, very intelligently arranged using a few multi-functional props (a doorframe with no door, designating the fluid border between the worlds of the Egyptians and the ‘foreigners’; a table which, in the final act, becomes the tomb of Aida and Radamès). The singers’ superb acting and excellently-prepared stage movement permitted one to turn a blind eye to the lack of originality in the costumes, which in ‘new’ opera theatre more and more often take the form of universal signs and symbols (if a ruler, then in a suit; if a fighter, then in a field uniform; if a high-born woman, then in high heels and peignoir). Despite this, I have the impression that staged concert performances should be more ‘static’, or at any rate based on different means of expression than in the case of a fully-staged rendition. Especially if my gloomy prediction that semi-staged productions will become the daily bread of opera comes to pass.

Alessandra Volpe. Photo: Clive Barda

However, experiencing Aida in a perspective so intimate, devoid of all extravagance, did make me aware of something about which I had never thought before. With whom did the first Egyptian viewers of Verdi’s opera identify? With the victorious army of the Pharaohs, or with the conquered Ethiopians? This a dilemma for post-colonial theorists, considerably more intriguing than lengthy discussion of whether Aida was an imperial spectacle for alienated strangers from Europe in Cairo, or yet another masterpiece of a form for which the Egyptians had acquired a taste back during the reign of the Mamluks.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Zakhor is no ordinary memory. It is an imperative to remember, a duty of every Jew, repeated in daily prayers – an absolute imperative, preceding knowledge, preceding comprehension. If we tried to explain it, using some mundane example, zakhor would be the cry of “Stop! Don’t touch it!” to a child marching confidently towards a bucket of boiling water. Remember before you comprehend. One day you will understand why you cannot put your hand into boiling water. In such an approach memory becomes an internalised norm imposed from outside. As years go by and new experiences are acquired, it will turn into an autonomous norm, lived through, understood and observed voluntarily. Since the destruction of the Second Temple and beginning of the diaspora zakhor has constituted the Jewish identity: treating history as a myth that helps to give sense to the present. History relived again and again is a guarantee of existence. If you forget, if you do not instil it in your sons – you will lose the way to the land which the Lord “swore to your ancestors”.

In this sense Weinberg’s The Passenger is an opera about memory. It is not about an all-consuming memory of the wrongs suffered, as Zofia Posmysz feared, interpreting Marta’s final monologue – featuring a fragment from a poem by Paul Éluard – as being against the Christian duty to forgive. Contrary to the doubts expressed by some Jewish communities after the American premiere of the work, The Passenger is indeed an opera about the Holocaust, although there are virtually no Jews in the libretto. They are not there, because Weinberg wrote the opera in circumstances precluding any direct references to the tragedy of the Shoah.

Photo: Yossi Zwecker

As early as in 1944, at a time of the Red Army’s impressive victories over the Third Reich, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee lost its raison d’être, having been established two years previously by the NKVD – mainly to win support of the Jewish diaspora for the USSR’s fight against Nazi Germany. Shortly after the war the Committee’s activities began to be denounced as “nationalistic” and “Zionistic”.  January 1948 was marked by the death of the composer’s father-in-law: the chairman of the Committee, Solomon Mikhoels, an eminent actor and director, artistic director of the Moscow Jewish Theatre, who shortly after the founding of the Committee set out, on Stalin’s initiative, on a long overseas journey, during which he managed to persuade American Jews to allocate funds for the purchase of one thousand planes, five hundred tanks as well as food and other necessary provisions for the Soviet Army. The bodies of Michoels and the theatre critic Vladimir Golubov-Potapov were found by factory workers on their way to their morning shift. According to the investigators’ report, commissioned by Ivan Serov, future head of the KGB, the death “resulted from [the victims’] having been run over by a heavy goods vehicle. The deceased had all their ribs broken and pulmonary tissue torn, Michoels – broken spine, Golubov-Potapov – hip bone. (…) No data suggesting that Michoels and Golubov-Potapov had died as a result of a cause other than a hit-and-run accident were found in the course of the investigation”.

By the death of Stalin hundreds of intellectuals and artists of Jewish origin had been “liquidated” as a result of massive repressions. After the dictator’s death even his fierce opponent Nikita Khrushchev did not include his murderous provocations in violations of the “Leninist principles of the revolutionary rule of law”. The Passenger was written in the shadow of a new wave of Soviet anti-Semitism which was a response to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. A young radio engineer, Boris Kochubievsky, who sent a letter to Brezhnev declaring that he wanted to settle in the Jewish state, thus fulfilling the dream of hundreds of generations preceding him, was summoned to a KGB office and without any hearing was locked in psychiatric hospital. There began a smear campaign against real and alleged “Zionists”, with its repercussions affecting nearly all Jews in the USSR.

At that time Weinberg was locked in a painful battle with manifestations of memory and oblivion. In 1966 he left Moscow for the first time since the war – joining a delegation of Soviet composers going to the Warsaw Autumn Festival. His former colleagues from the conservatoire pretended they did not recognise him. He himself did not recognise Warsaw from his youthful memories. He did not want to return again. He came back from Poland with the melody of a recently discovered song to Mary, Angelus ad Virginem missus, echoed in the figure of the prisoner Bronka. In his opera only she has an unequivocally “Polish” sonic identity. In Act II Marta – the eponymous passenger from cabin 45 – uses the musical language of a Bessarabian shtetl, from which Weinberg’s future parents escaped. Debased, Tadeusz plays the chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor before an SS man, not only in an act of artistic defiance, but also as a tribute to the thousands of murdered Jewish violinists.

Photo: Yossi Zwecker

What many contemporary critics see as trivialisation of Zofia Posnysz’s message was, in fact, an attempt to outmanoeuvre Soviet censorship by Weinberg and his librettist Alexander Medvedev. It failed. In 1968 the opera was removed from the repertoire of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, having been accused of “abstract humanism”, which in the Soviet newspeak meant that the spectators could see The Passenger as a veiled manifesto of Zionism or an allegory of the Gulag. Weinberg did not live to see the premiere: he died in 1996, ten years before a concert performance of his beloved composition. Its subsequent fate has been mentioned many times, especially in the context of David Pountney’s Warsaw production, which reached Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera in October 2010, less than three months after the stage premiere in Bregenz. I wrote at the time that in Poland, which still could not shake off the memory of the Holocaust, it was difficult to accept a naturalistic, although at times “aestheticising” vision of Auschwitz. That we would prefer to transform this tragedy into a symbol or, even better, to remain silent about it.

Yet Poles treat the Shoah in historiographic terms, as a tragedy that has not been worked through, but fortunately is a thing of the past. The Jews experience the Holocaust as if it happened yesterday; they cultivate its memory in order to continue to live and to survive. They do not want any allegories. They want an experience. That is why I was so looking forward to the Israeli premiere of The Passenger, which took place – after years of efforts and thanks to considerable help from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute – at the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, in Pountney’s now legendary staging. I had heard that during the preparations for the premiere the musicians, especially the singers, reacted very emotionally, entered into their roles with abandon, became their characters. The result exceeded all my expectations. The orchestra – conducted by Steven Mercurio, who had conducted The Passenger several times in the United States, for example at the Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit – did have its weak moments, but there were miracles happening on stage. This was undoubtedly largely due to the three protagonists (Adrienn Miksch as Marta, Daved Karanas as Liza and David Danholt as Walter), who had triumphed in earlier productions of Weinberg’s opera. Yet the old troupers had managed to share their experience with their Israeli colleagues so effectively that already in the middle of the first act I could no longer sense who had been singing their roles for years and who was making their debut in roles which often required them facing the memory of the tragedy of their own ancestors. Applauded thunderously in the middle of Act II, Alla Vasilevitsky (Katia) is a recent graduate of the Meitar Opera Studio, a programme for young artists affiliated with the local opera company. Zlata Khershberg was harrowing Bronka. After the final performance the artist hopped on a plane and flew to Warsaw to take part in the Stanisław Moniuszko competition. The audience gave the premiere cast a standing ovation. There were tears. There were questions. There were long conversations after leaving the theatre.

Photo: Yossi Zwecker

In recent years I have heard a lot of Weinberg’s music and seen a lot of productions of The Passenger. Not once did it cross my mind that Pountney’s staging – greeted with mixed feelings in Poland nearly a decade ago – would grow so much, would get new meanings, would turn out to be a vehicle of history tangled up in the present. One day after the Israeli premiere, a few hours before Yom HaShoah – the Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins at sunset and since 1951 has been celebrated on the 27th day of the month of Nisan – I took advantage of the courtesy of the company’s management and sneaked onto the empty stage with sets ready for subsequent performances in the run. I walked along the theatrical railway tracks leading to the Gate of Death. I stopped to look at the remains of Tadeusz’s broken violin. I remembered. I did not take it in yet. Perhaps one day I will understand.

Translated by: Anna Kijak
Original article available at: https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/pasazerka-z-bydlecych-wagonow-158779