{"id":7040,"date":"2022-12-10T12:41:23","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T11:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=7040"},"modified":"2022-12-12T16:34:01","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T15:34:01","slug":"love-and-eternal-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=7040","title":{"rendered":"Love and Eternal Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took me eight years to come full circle and return to the beginnings to my freelancing career. In 2014, instead of celebrating the 160th anniversary of my favourite composer at home by the loudspeakers, I decided to go to a performance of The Cunning Little Vixen <\/em>in a production that originated in Prague and was brought to Brno for the Jan\u00e1\u010dek Brno festival \u2013 the motto of which was \u201cHappy Birthday Leo\u0161!\u201d. After more than two decades on the editorial board of Ruch Muzyczny <\/em>I made my debut as a freelancer with a review of Ond\u0159ej Havelka\u2019s production. Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s oeuvre has always been at the top of my priorities as a reviewer. As it happened, however, I made it to the Brno biennial for the second time only now: partly because I was always at a loss as to what to choose from the festival\u2019s rich offerings. I nearly gave up again, because this year the organisers exceeded themselves: the programme of the nineteen-day event included no fewer than thirty-six musical events, among them five opera performances, headed by the hosts\u2019 production of From the House of the Dead<\/em> combined with the Glagolitic Mass<\/em>, directed by Ji\u0159\u00ed He\u0159man and conducted by Jakub Hr\u016f\u0161a, the newly appointed successor to Antonio Pappano at London\u2019s Royal Opera House; as well as non-operatic performances of the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by its boss Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hanus, and of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with Tom\u00e1\u0161 Netopil. I decided to content myself with the last four days of the festival, not wanting to miss a rare opportunity to hear Erwin Schulhoff\u2019s only opera Plameny<\/em> in its entirety. For the next two years I will wonder how to see the most of the 2024 biennial, which will last over three weeks.<\/p>\n

Jan\u00e1\u010dek Brno is a fairly new venture, launched in 2008 with an overview of all stage works of its patron. With time music by other composers was added to Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s oeuvre, making it possible to show his legacy in a broader context of the period. However, the main programme axis is still opera of the modernist era \u2013 which is what adds uniqueness to the event, appreciated by, for example, the jury of the International Opera Awards, who in 2018 presented Jan\u00e1\u010dek Brno with an award for the best festival. I have written many times about how the Czechs love their national repertoire and know how to popularise it all over the world. When I was in Brno I saw once again that they also know how to appreciate the mastery of foreign performers, but \u2013 unlike my compatriots \u2013 do not feel that their own music requires persistent promotion by great stars from the West.<\/p>\n

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V\u011bc Makropulos<\/em>. Nicky Spence (Gregor) and \u00c1ngeles Blancas Gul\u00edn (Emilia Marty). Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n

This is hardly surprising given that Czech conductors \u2013 well-versed in the idiom of Central and Eastern European music \u2013 head some of the best orchestras in the world. I had an opportunity to admire Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hanus shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic: in a brilliant interpretation of Smetana\u2019s The Bartered Bride <\/em>at the Bayerische Staatsoper, and soon after that at the helm of WNO in a stylish and disciplined approach to Prokofiev\u2019s War and Peace.<\/em> On the day of my arrival in Brno, which happened to coincide with the Czech Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day, Hanus led the Welsh orchestra in a programme consisting of Britten\u2019s Four Sea Interludes<\/em>, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Biblical Songs<\/em>, Wagner\u2019s Prelude and Liebestod<\/em> from Tristan und Isolde <\/em>and Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s Sinfonietta<\/em>, which was highly appropriate in the circumstances. I had the impression that Hanus felt the least \u201cat home\u201d in Wagner\u2019s music \u2013 played too smoothly, without an inner pulse and appropriate gradation of tension. On the other hand he was able to beautifully highlight the exuberant contrasts and shimmering nature of the textures in Britten\u2019s Interludes <\/em>and at the same time surprisingly emphatically stress the composer\u2019s Mussorgsky inspirations (for example, in the swaying Allegro spiritoso<\/em>). He provided a wonderful example of collaboration with the singer in Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s songs \u2013 Adam Plachetka’s velvety bass-baritone is often lost in the sumptuous acoustics of grand opera houses; in Hanus\u2019 subtle interpretation the soloist impressed not only with the beauty of his voice and soft phrasing, but also with wisely delivered text, taken from the 16th-century Kralice Bible.\u00a0<\/em>But all this was nothing in comparison with the thrilling performance of the Sinfonietta<\/em>, in which the fanfare \u2013 as Jan\u00e1\u010dek would have it \u2013 was played by thirteen musicians of the Czech Armed Forces\u2019 brass band. Unlike most symphony orchestra players, they did it without a single slip-up, which clearly suggests that Jan\u00e1\u010dek knew what he was doing. The concert received a tumultuous and fully deserved standing ovation, which may have contributed to WNO\u2019s even greater success in the performance of V\u011bc Makropulos <\/em>the following day.<\/p>\n

To this day I shudder at the memory of the only staging of this masterpiece in Poland, presented exactly ten years ago at Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera, when the spectators \u2013 lured by a misleading promise of a science-fiction comedy, accustomed to the image of a cheerful Czech over a pint of beer, and unfamiliar with both Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s oeuvre and Karel \u010capek\u2019s bitter dystopia \u2013 began to leave the auditorium in droves already halfway through the performance. What must have also contributed to this was the inept playing of the orchestra under Gerd Schaller, who not only failed to control the various instrumental groups, but also to explain to the musicians what the score was about. Hanus didn\u2019t have the slightest problem with this, probably also because he had been poring over the score for months together with Jon\u00e1\u0161 H\u00e1jek and Annette Thein, preparing a new edition for the Prague branch of the B\u00e4renreiter publishing house. In addition, in their interpretation of Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s operas British musicians equal and sometimes even surpass Czech performers. Among the members of the international cast of WNO\u2019s V\u011bc Makropulos<\/em> the most pleasant surprise came from the Spanish soprano \u00c1ngeles Blancas Gul\u00edn in the role of Emilia Marty \u2013 a singer endowed with a small but very charming and exceedingly expressive voice, appropriately \u201cold-fashioned\u201d for this difficult part, and supported by excellent acting and a great feel for the character. When it comes to the rest of the cast, the most noteworthy performances came from Nicky Spence as Gregor, David Stout as Baron Prus and the ever-reliable Mark Le Brocq as V\u00edtek, whose monologue explaining the intricacies of the libretto \u2013 during the interval between the first and second acts \u2013 won far more approval from the Czech audience than from the blas\u00e9 spectators at the Cardiff premiere. Yet who knows, perhaps my most vivid memory of the production \u2013 in a pared-down, but very stylish staging by Olivia Fuchs (director), Nicola Turner (set and costume designer), Robbie Butler (lighting designer) and Sam Sharpless (video projections) \u2013 will be Alan Oke\u2019s brilliant performance in the episodic role of Count Hauk-\u0160endorf. In any case, it has to be said that the creative team hit the nail on the head when it came to \u010capek\u2019s and Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s message \u2013 this is one of the masterpieces of the modernist grotesque, which in the finale should force guffaws back down our throats and transform them into helpless sobs. The creators of the Welsh production fully succeeded in this.<\/p>\n

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Plameny<\/em>. Tone Kummervold (La Morte) and Denys Pivnitskyi (Don Juan). Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n

Not quite so in the case of the creative team of the eagerly awaited Flammen<\/em>, brought from the National Theatre in Prague and presented in its original Czech version as Plameny<\/em>. Schulhoff\u2019s only opera was unlucky, as was its composer: after the failure of the Brno premiere, nothing\u00a0 came out of Erich Kleiber’s plans for a Berlin staging, due to the Nazi campaign against modern art. Schulhoff, cursed as a representative of Entartete Kunst, and hated as a Jew and a communist, after the Nazis seized Czechoslovakia he applied for Soviet citizenship, which did not protect him from deportation to the Bavarian fortress of W\u00fclzburg, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942. He came up with the idea for an opera loosely based on the myth of Don Juan in 1923 and discussed his vision with Max Brod, a friend and biographer of Kafka, and translator of Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s librettos into German. Brod advised him to collaborate with the Czech scriptwriter Karl Josef Bene\u0161, who together with Schulhoff created an oneiric, surreal tale of a seducer in love with Death \u2013 the only woman he is unable to seduce and who ultimately seals his fate. The dissolute Don Juan will not end up in hell: the punishment for his transgressions will be the curse of eternal life, with no hope of fulfilment.<\/p>\n

Schulhoff got down to work on the score in 1929 and slugged away at it for three years. The premiere in January 1932, at the Divadlo na Veve\u0159\u00ed, the former seat of the National Theatre in Brno, was a complete fiasco. The audience rejected not only the unique structure of the work \u2013 which combined elements of opera, pantomime and symphonic poem \u2013 but also its exuberant eclecticism, vacillating between impressionism, brutal expressionism and relatively orderly neoclassicism. Plameny<\/em>\u00a0begins like Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l’apr\u00e8s-midi d’un faune<\/em>, only to end in gentle sounds of the glockenspiel and the celesta, which initially bring to mind the operas of Richards Strauss and then \u2013 of his not always inspired numerous imitators. In the middle it is possible to find literally everything \u2013 from almost line-for-line quotations from Berg\u2019s Wozzeck<\/em> to New Orleans jazz inspirations and an archaising pastiche in the style of Szymanowski. Schulhoff treats the human voice in Plameny<\/em> in a strictly instrumental manner: perhaps the only truly \u201coperatic\u201d fragment in the work is La Morte\u2019s solo in the finale of the tenth scene: with a moving glissando of the mezzo-soprano at the end of the phrase \u201csalvation is so far away again\u201d.<\/p>\n

I have to do justice to Ji\u0159\u00ed Ro\u017ee\u0148, who managed to keep the sometimes unruly musicians of the Prague orchestra in check throughout the opera. Among the soloists the singer who deserved the biggest applause was the Norwegian Tone Kummervold, underestimated by the audience, who in the thankless role of La Morte showed the full range of now nearly obsolete vocal techniques. A very decent performance came from the female chorus of Shadows, but the performers of the main roles were disappointing, which is especially true of Denys Pivnitskyi as Don Juan, a singer who is not very musical, though gifted with a healthy and strong tenor. Slightly more satisfying was the soprano Victoria Korosunova in the multiplied role of the seducer\u2019s previous mistresses. However, I can hardly blame the singers, as the chaos on stage was primarily caused by Calixto Bieito, a director who after a few phenomenal productions in the early days of his career lost his inspiration completely and has been frittering away his talent ever since. I would advise those of my colleagues who compare Bieito’s concepts to Luis Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s to go and watch some of the latter’s films again and refresh their memories of their youth. All in all, Plameny<\/em> turned out to be a beautiful catastrophe giving us hope that Schulhoff\u2019s forgotten work would eventually return to the stage for good \u2013 hopefully in a better thought-out staging.<\/p>\n

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Jan Jirasky. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek<\/p>\n

However, Brno did not live by opera alone. During these four days, I also managed to form an opinion (a very favourable one) on the Brno Children\u2019s Choir under the direction of Valeria Mat\u2019a\u0161ov\u00e1 and the mixed K\u00fchn Choir, which fared slightly worse under the direction of Jakub Pikla; admire the stylish playing \u2013 reminiscent of Rudolf Firku\u0161n\u00fd\u2019s artistry \u2013 of Jan Jirasky, a professor at the Brno Academy of Music and an outstanding specialist on Jan\u00e1\u010dek piano music; and contemplate the condition of contemporary piano playing after a recital by Linda Lee, winner of this year\u2019s Jan\u00e1\u010dek Competition. Lee is technically phenomenal, but completely unaware of the meaning of the music, which pours from her fingers like perfectly round and clearly artificial pearls.<\/p>\n

Still, I will go back to Brno, the city where Jan\u00e1\u010dek spent over forty years, created his biggest masterpieces and to this day has not let himself be forgotten.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took me eight years to come full circle and return to the beginnings to my freelancing career. In 2014, instead of celebrating the 160th anniversary of my favourite composer at home by the loudspeakers, I decided to go to a performance of The Cunning Little Vixen in a production that originated in Prague and … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-7040","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7040"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7056,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040\/revisions\/7056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}