{"id":7168,"date":"2023-02-14T16:06:34","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T15:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=7168"},"modified":"2023-02-14T16:47:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T15:47:29","slug":"the-dutchman-under-renovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=7168","title":{"rendered":"The Flying Dutchman Under Renovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a teenager, I loved Tadeusz R\u00f3\u017cewicz’s now rather forgotten play The<\/em> Laocoon Group<\/em> \u2013 not least because I was lucky enough to see a production at Warsaw\u2019s Teatr Wsp\u00f3\u0142czesny directed by Zygmunt H\u00fcbner and featuring an unequalled cast led by Zofia Mrozowska, Wies\u0142aw Michnikowski and Henryk Borowski. It was a frightfully funny performance, from which I will always remember the pretentious tirade of the Father, a representative of the so-called working intelligentsia, who, having returned from Italy, tells his family about the famous sculpture from the Vatican Museums, weaving quotations from Virgil, among other things, into his story. The problem is that he only saw a plaster copy of it, as the original had just been removed for restoration.<\/p>\n

I had a vivid recollection of the scene from The Laocoon Group<\/em>, when I received a message confirming my accreditation for a performance of Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. It wasn’t until I read that I was to pick up my ticket at the entrance to the EuropAuditorium in Piazza Costituzione that I remembered that as of January the famous Sala Bibiena, and with it the entire theatre building, would be undergoing renovation for four years \u2013 roughly the length of the reconstruction work after the great fire of 1931, which ended with the rebuilding of the auditorium in its current horseshoe shape. Tough luck: I had to get over the fact I would not be seeing the most famous \u201cWagnerian\u201d stage in Italy. Not only the venue of the Italian premiere of Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> and of the first performance of Lohengrin<\/em> \u2013 which Verdi followed from a box with the score on his lap \u2013 but also the first theatre in the world to receive official permission from the Bayreuth Festival to stage Parsifal<\/em>, on 1 January 1914, under the baton of Rodolfo Ferrari, with the phenomenal Giuseppe Borgatti in the title role and the Polish singer Helena Rakowska \u2013 the wife of Tullio Serafin \u2013 in the role of Kundry. An opera house headed by such music directors as Sergiu Celibidache and Riccardo Chailly in the past, and since last January by Oksana Lyniv \u2013 not just the first female conductor here, but also the first ever woman to be in charge of an opera company in Italy. One year before that Lyniv broke another taboo by conducting Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> at the opening of the Wagner feast in Bayreuth, after 145 years of uninterrupted male reign at the helm of the local orchestra.<\/p>\n

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Scene from the Act 1. Photo: Andrea Ranzi<\/p>\n

In August 2022 I had mixed feelings after a revival of the Bayreuth Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> under her baton. I decided to verify my opinion in Bologna, choosing for the purpose a performance with the second cast in order not to be influenced by my impressions of the singers I had heard the previous season not just in Bayreuth, but also at Grange Park Opera in England. The first pleasant surprise came, when I dealt with the company\u2019s very efficient press office. The second \u2013 when I picked up the superbly edited programme book for the production, with exhaustive documentation of past productions of Wagner\u2019s opera at the Teatro Comunale and an extensive discography of the work, dating back to 1936. The third \u2013 after my first look inside the EuropAuditorium, a 1,700-seat theatre with a fairly deep orchestra pit and a fully equipped stage tower, located in the 1975 functionalist Palazzo di Congressi (its main designer was Melchiorre Bega, the architect behind the famous \u201cgolden high-rise\u201d of the Axel Springer concern in Berlin). It may not be a dream venue for presenting Wagner\u2019s works, but it does boast excellent, very selective acoustics, making it possible to honestly assess not only the soloists\u2019 abilities, but also the overall interpretative concept for the piece.<\/p>\n

However, I will start with the staging, as it seemed to be absent in Bologna, which is all the more surprising given that both the director Paul Curran and the set designer Robert Innes Hopkins are experienced opera people who have worked for years \u2013 successfully \u2013 on several continents. In addition, both are highly skilled at Personregie and creating a theatrical world in a relatively small space. Yet this time neither of them took into account the fact that the EuropAuditorium stage is shallow, but relatively wide, and, most importantly, that it does not provide intimate contact with the audience, seated in a vast and flat auditorium. The vision presented by Curran and Hopkins (in collaboration with the lighting director Daniele Naldi and the projection designer Driscoll Otto) gave the impression of being not so much minimalist as economical and, most significantly, imitative of the Florence staging of Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> done four years earlier by Curran with a different set designer (Saverio Santoliquido). Images \u2013 almost identical to those in Florence \u2013 of the rolling sea and the ghostly attributes of the Dutchman\u2019s ship were displayed in Bologna against a backdrop of three overlapping panels, in a space less well lit and less appealing to the audience\u2019s imagination. In the second act, set \u2013 unconvincingly \u2013 in a contemporary industrial sewing room, projections partially replaced the fixed decoration from Santoliquido\u2019s vision, and were supplemented by Caspar David Friedrich\u2019s painting The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog<\/em> (serving as a portrait of the legendary Dutchman) superimposed on the waves. Like four years ago the costumes were from an unspecified period. Several theatrical effects \u2013 including the pulling ashore of Daland\u2019s invisible ship \u2013 were copied from the previous staging. There was no chemistry between the characters whatsoever. In the finale the Dutchman sneaked out through a gap in the middle screen, while Senta climbed to the top of the side panel and disappeared in the wings. This failed compromise between tradition and modernity was more reminiscent of a staged concert or amateur theatre performance, although, admittedly, it did not particularly bother the singers.<\/p>\n

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Sonja \u0160ari\u0107 (Senta) and Anton Keremidtchiev (The Dutchman). Photo: Andrea Ranzi<\/p>\n

They were, however, especially in the Act 1, hampered by the orchestra playing with a truly Verdian temperament and generally in a style more suitable for I vespri siciliani<\/i> or Un ballo in maschera <\/i>rather than any of Wagner\u2019s scores. As an ardent admirer and researcher of archives – including regional archives \u2013 I listened to this performance with genuine emotion, relishing the virtuoso displays of the violin concertmaster, the tearful solos of the oboe and the repeated attacks of the brass. It would have been truly fascinating, if Lyniv had been able to give the whole at least a semblance of a consistent romantic narrative. Yet all doubts I had raised about her interpretation in Bayreuth were more than confirmed in Bologna. Lyniv is a genuine modernist, dissecting the piece into its constituent parts, extracting sometimes unexpected details from the texture \u2013 but she is unable to put them back together into a convincing story. Her conducting is sweeping, has real verve, but it works only in the most dazzling passages. Wherever the narrative requires lyricism and ability to read forgotten aesthetic codes \u2013 it loses its pulse, gets bogged down in meanderings of boredom and feigned emotion. Lyniv\u2019s interpretations bring to mind monochromatic photographs in which it is impossible to see the forest from behind black and white trees. There is inhuman sharpness and surgical precision in them. There are no colours, chiaroscuro effects or logical dynamic and agogic contrasts.<\/p>\n

That is why Anton Keremidtchiev, who is endowed with a small but very handsome baritone, shone as the Dutchman only in Act 3 \u2013 his chilling monologue \u201cDie Frist ist um\u201d was drowned in a sea of perfectly articulated but meaningless orchestral sounds. That is why Senta, portrayed by the very young and very musical Sonja \u0160ari\u0107, gave up after several attempts to make her famous ballad sway and sang it politely, evenly, to the beat imposed by the conductor. Goran Juri\u0107 must have looked up to Peter Rose from the first cast during rehearsals. Rose knows how to highlight the similarities between Daland and the equally ambiguous character of Rocco from Beethoven\u2019s Fidelio<\/em>, but Juri\u0107 lacked intonational and technical prowess in the role. I find it difficult to judge Alexander Schulz, who took on the role of Erik just days before the opening night; however, I did not expect a tenor singing with such a strong foreign accent and in a manner associated with verismo rather than Wagner\u2019s youthful oeuvre. Despite her young age the Russian mezzo-soprano Marina Ogii has a voice that is too dilapidated even for the role of Mary. Paolo Antognetti gave a very decent performance as the Steersman: I\u2019m referring here more to the sonorous, bronzy tone of his voice rather than to his interpretation of his character. The unquestionable hero of the performance was the Teatro Comunale chorus, prepared by its new master, Gea Garatti Ansini, and singing with perfectly produced, rich and beautifully rounded sound.<\/p>\n

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Anton Keremidtchiev, Alexander Schulz (Erik) and Sonja \u0160ari\u0107. Photo: Andrea Ranzi<\/p>\n

Summing up my field research on Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder<\/em> as interpreted by Oksana Lyniv, I will return to the discussion of the two Gentlemen with the Customs Officers in R\u00f3\u017cewicz’s play: after an exchange of remarks about Kierkegaard, one of the Customs Officers, when asked about what is new in the country, waves his hand and says: \u201cDisintegration, alienation, frustration, everything as it used to be\u201d. I never thought I would have to go all the way to Bologna to find that out.<\/p>\n

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

When I was a teenager, I loved Tadeusz R\u00f3\u017cewicz’s now rather forgotten play The Laocoon Group \u2013 not least because I was lucky enough to see a production at Warsaw\u2019s Teatr Wsp\u00f3\u0142czesny directed by Zygmunt H\u00fcbner and featuring an unequalled cast led by Zofia Mrozowska, Wies\u0142aw Michnikowski and Henryk Borowski. It was a frightfully funny … [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":["entry","post","publish","author-mangusta","post-7168","format-standard","category-posts-in-english","category-wedrowki-operowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168","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=7168"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7179,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168\/revisions\/7179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}