{"id":9206,"date":"2025-10-31T12:52:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T11:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=9206"},"modified":"2025-10-31T20:49:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T19:49:38","slug":"greyness-covers-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=9206","title":{"rendered":"Greyness Covers the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I still cannot get over the fact that Mozart\u2019s Idomeneo <\/em>is so rarely seen on our stages. We owe the only post-war stagings to the Warsaw Chamber Opera and the Polish Royal Opera. Despite the undoubted merits of each of these productions and the tremendous efforts of the musicians associated with the historically informed performance movement at various stages of its development in Poland, they all passed like a meteor, delighting the eyes and ears of a handful of spectators. For obvious reasons, given the microscopic sizes of the two theatres. It could be argued that Idomeneo<\/em> was Mozart\u2019s first mature opera, followed by masterpieces more worthy of permanent presence in the repertoire of large houses. Yet there is no denying that Idomeneo <\/em>is a masterpiece in its own right, a work that is superbly constructed in terms of drama and requires extraordinary skill from most soloists, especially the singer in the title role, to whom the composer entrusted the most difficult tenor part in his entire oeuvre. It is so difficult that post-war attempts to present it in its original form (a task singers were still tackling valiantly at the beginning of the previous century) were not made until the 1980s. However, we should be in the vanguard of this trend, if only because the basis of all critical editions of Idomeneo <\/em>are the autographs of the first two of the opera\u2019s three acts kept in the Jagiellonian Library in Krak\u00f3w.<\/p>\n

So much for the introduction and explanation of my travels in search of an ideal Idomeneo <\/em>in other European opera houses. I wrote extensively about the complicated fate of the myth, its presence in opera and about Mozart\u2019s work itself last year, after the premiere at the Staatstheater Mainz, under the baton of Hermann B\u00e4umer, who soon after that became Music Director of the Prague State Opera. My review of that production was very favourable, mainly because of its musical qualities, not to be underestimated in an ambitious company, though one that operates on the fringes of operatic life in Germany. In Prague things looked even more interesting in many respects: the conductor was to be Konrad Jungh\u00e4nel, a living legend of period instrument performance and frequent collaborator of the director, Calixto Bieito, known as a \u2018Quentin Tarantino of the opera stage\u2019, a provocateur who accuses his colleagues of creating productions so empty and bland as if the twentieth century had never happened.<\/p>\n

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Evan LeRoy Johnson (Idomeneo) and Rebecka Wallroth (Idamante). Photo: Serghei Gherciu<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t usually take artists\u2019 iconoclastic statements seriously, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for Bieito, for his open, \u2018proletarian\u2019 approach to music, for his fascination with the craftsmanship of Brook and Bergman, for his uncommon \u2013 at least in the past \u2013 sense of operatic dramaturgy. However, his most recent productions reveal increasingly serious symptoms of a creative crisis. This also applies to this year\u2019s staging of Das Rheingold<\/em> at the Paris Opera, which caused such consternation among the critics that some of them explained the disaster by citing internal conflicts and problems within the company. The reviewers could not believe their eyes. Bieito always knew how to tell stories, didn\u2019t he? Apparently, he has lost this ability, because the Prague Idomeneo <\/em>is even worse in this respect. Bieito\u2019s minimalist (which is not an objection) staging, completely devoid of tension (which is a very serious objection indeed), takes place in Ana-Sophie Kirsch\u2019s sets, banally organising space, dominated in the first two acts by moving panels of translucent plastic, and virtually absent in the last act. Paula Klein\u2019s costumes \u2013 hard to say whether in line with the director\u2019s concept or lack thereof \u2013 look as if taken straight from the catalogue of her previous designs for Bieito, not necessarily having any connection with the message of Idomeneo.<\/em> The fact that some of the scenes are illustrated with projections from Eisenstein\u2019s Strike <\/em>and Battleship Potemkin<\/em>, and Milestone\u2019s All Quiet on the Western Front <\/em>only reinforced my belief that Bieito was rehashing his earlier work. A few solutions do echo his old imagination (for example, the dropping of dozens of water canisters, symbolising a sea monster, from a net suspended over the stage), but most of them seem downright grotesque (horror evoked by the spotlight of head torches, as if in a scout patrol; the incomprehensible scene in which Elettra plots her revenge by hugging Idomeneo\u2019s shoes, only to end up smearing herself with shoe polish; the smashing of a tacky statue of Neptune as a sign of the protagonist\u2019s defiance of the deity). Most importantly, Bieito made no effort to present any relationships between the characters \u2013 the tentatively built tension between Idomeneo and Idamante seems to originate in the music itself, not in the director\u2019s concept.<\/p>\n

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Evan LeRoy Johnson. Photo: Serghei Gherciu<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of this completely lifeless staging the efforts of the performers were all the more admirable, especially as Jungh\u00e4nel, himself appearing at the St\u00e1tn\u00ed opera for the first time, had a cast made up entirely of singers making their role debuts. This may have been the reason behind the quite substantial cuts in the score: out went not only most of the recitatives, but also some scenes as well as the figure of the king\u2019s confidant Arbace \u2013 indeed, the least interesting character in the work. Although the conductor did not manage to fully master the treacherous acoustics of the venue, which disrupted the sound balance in the orchestra \u2013 to the detriment of the strings, unfortunately \u2013 he conducted the whole with style, clearly highlighting motifs and maintaining the pulse without forcing the tempo, greatly helping the soloists as a result. The best among them, in my opinion, was Evan LeRoy Johnson in the title role, a singer with an almost perfect tenor for the part \u2013 resonant, broad, with just the right baritone tinge in the lower register; agile, though perhaps not yet at ease in the breakneck coloraturas of the aria \u201cFuor del mar\u201d in Act Two, rewarded with a well-deserved ovation. In order to completely win over the Czech audience to his interpretation of the character of Idomeneo, the artist still needs to grow a bit more into the role and gain some confidence. The local music lovers have quite a different idea of what a \u201cMozartian\u201d tenor should sound like \u2013 rightly so to a certain extent, but not in this case. There are neither predecessors nor successors of this figure in the composer\u2019s oeuvre. It is a blind alley in the evolution of his style, perhaps because the first performer of Idomeneo, Anton Raaff, considered by Christian Schubart to be the greatest male voice of all time, was nearing seventy at the time and, to put it mildly, failed to meet the young composer\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n

The same goes for Vincenzo Prato, who sang Idamante at the premiere. Mozart was generally prejudiced against castrati, but \u2018il nostro molto amato castrato Dal Prato\u2019, as he wrote wryly in a letter to his father, was considered by him to be not only a poor singer but also a complete idiot. The composer soon transposed the part for the tenor voice and this was the version that was later performed for years. The return to the soprano voice has been a matter of recent decades, and it is still not always possible to find singers suitably contrasted in timbre and temperament for the three roles of Idamante, Ilia and Elettra, intended for this Fach.<\/em> This was also the case in Prague, although Rebecka Wallroth, who has a handsome and well-placed voice, though too lyrical for the role of Idomeneo\u2019s son, still fared the best of the three. Ekaterina Krovateva\u2019s dense, meaty soprano was definitely not suited to the character of the innocent Ilia, while Petra Alvarez \u0160imkov\u00e1 as the demonic Elettra made up for her technical shortcomings with an interpretation bordering on the grotesque and the hysterical, especially in the bravura aria \u201cD\u2019Oreste, d\u2019Aiace\u201d. Very decent performances came from Josef Moravec in the tenor role of the High Priest and Zden\u011bk Plech as the Voice of the Oracle. I was a bit disappointed by the chorus, singing decently though without much expression, which is a serious shortcoming when it comes to performing this highly nuanced part, one of the finest in Mozart\u2019s entire oeuvre.<\/p>\n

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Rebecka Wallroth and Ekaterina Krovateva (Ilia). Photo: Serghei Gherciu<\/p>\n

Despite my reservations, I must stress, however, that the main culprit for the performance\u2019s shortcomings was the director, who left the singers to their own devices, gave them no direction, made it difficult to explore the meaning of the work and build convincing, full-blooded characters. What also may have prevented the Prague Idomeneo<\/em> from becoming successful was the unexpected death of Reinhard Traub, who collaborated with Bieito on the lighting design. Traub died during the preparations for the production. Too early and at the height of his creative powers, as I had been able to see many times at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. It was he who provided brilliant lighting designs for Lohengrin <\/em>and Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>in productions directed by Sharon and Kratzer respectively. He was among those who made Schwarz\u2019s Ring <\/em>watchable at all. He highlighted good stagings and brought out everything worth saving from the bad ones. On the State Opera stage, bathed in blues, pallid greens, depressing shades of ochre and grey \u2013 usually unrelated to the narrative \u2013 I failed to discern his masterful hand. The production lacked not only the spirit of the story, but also the spirit of light. All that was left was the music and the performers, who gave their best. And all credit to them for that.<\/p>\n

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

I still cannot get over the fact that Mozart\u2019s Idomeneo is so rarely seen on our stages. We owe the only post-war stagings to the Warsaw Chamber Opera and the Polish Royal Opera. Despite the undoubted merits of each of these productions and the tremendous efforts of the musicians associated with the historically informed performance … [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-9206","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\/9206","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=9206"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9216,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206\/revisions\/9216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}