Spyres Shines in Vienna's Austere But Perfect Palestrina

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Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina has never taken hold in the repertoire of any house. Arguments can be (and are) made it doesn't warrant being produced, and yet I can only argue that each time I hear it - and both productions I've seen (alas, only on video) Pfitzner's score sublimates my spirit and reaches beyond my understanding into something I feel . . . . something I can barely identify.

Vienna's revival which aired last night goes beyond even that. Having spent the last few days with Parsifal, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, and now, Palestrina, I feel I've somehow tuned into some level of highest, holiest German art.  I'm not complaining.

While the score continues to mostly gather dust, Christian Thielemann has championed Palestrina, spurred on by a critic who called it a nationalist piece of crap . . . a shitty piece.  This prompting the then young Thielemann to schedule for his first new production when he took over .Staatstheater Nürnberg in the 1980's.  He went on to lead performances elsewhere including London, Berlin, and now Vienna. From the first note to last, it is immediately apparent how dearly he loves this score, and he infuses that love and excitement throughout his cast, the orchestra and ultimately and the entire audience.  I can hardly recall a more rapturous ovation to the close of a first act than what I witnessed from the Viennese for this Palestrina. It was stupendous, really.  

The production by the late Herbert Wernicke is (from what I understand) being seen for the first time in 25 years - since it's 1999 premiere. Interestingly enough, Wernicke, also directed the Met's current Die Frau Ohne Schatten, dying in 2002, only months after its rapturous reception in New York.  His is a deceptive fairly bare bones looking set. In fact, when the curtain rose I thought for a moment the nearly bare stage was the actual stage of the Staatsoper. But looks are deceiving, and Wernicke's updated retelling of the great composer's tale takes place on the stage of a modern concert hall complee with risers for singers and musicians. There is also a composition desk where Palestrina spends almost all of his onstage time. 

It may look dull, but there are countless moments that bring Pfitzner's rapturous score to light and life.  The long sequence ending the first act, is sheer magic. As in the darkness, Palestrina listens to the masters, composing - inspired without even looking at his manuscript, then three angels appear, along with the spirit of his dead wife, as the rear wall opens to reveal a chorus of angels singing his mass before disappearing, leaving Palestrina at his desk in a rapturous awe. The effect is overwhelming, the pit raising the decibel level with its mighty orchestral heft and bells and drums. A truly spectacular gooseflesh inducing finale.

The second act can be overwhelming in a different way, as we prepare for the Council of Trent, with Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, politicians, royal agents, and servants argue politics, religion, the decision of Palestrina's fate for refusing to cooperate,with Rome, and more. It's all capped by the rising of the organ's pipe organs revealing the entry of the Council, more arguing, then an outbreak of violence, gunfire and confusion. Lots of things come to mind here: the end of Act Two of Der Rosenkavalier, Meistersinger's riot, and toss in some Carmina Burana.  

The final act returns us to the home of Palestrina, now old and weary (achieved not by makeup or wigs, but solely by movement) where for years he's been under house arrest. His son, Ighino, however has surreptitiously given this father's score of the mass to church authorities, and its eventual performance pleased Pope Pius IV, who appears unexpectedly to invite the aged composer spend the rest of his days leading the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Palestrina's nemesis, Cardinal Borromeo who had him imprisoned, realizes his greatness begs forgiveness, as voices from outside are heard praising Palestrina, the saviour of music.As all depart (in this staging) Ighino begins to play the organ as Palestrina lifts his baton toward the heavens and the opera closes on a single organ note.  It's kind of breathtaking. 

Palestrina requires an enormous cast - 42 roles in all, and Vienna did an outstanding job with nary a weak link among them.  In one of the greatest examples of luxury casting I've ever seen, Günther Groissböck appeared, magnificently, as Pope Pius IV for all of his three minutes. The man of the night, however, was, beyond any doubt, Michael Spyres who, as Palestrina, easily gives one of the best performances I've heard from him. The voice is big, warm, bright and cuts easily through Pfitzner's dense orchestration and choral forces with astonishing clarity and beauty. While the end was indeed moving, I still get the shivers thinking of what he did both musically and dramatically at the end of the first. 

In a cast of marvelous singers, I must also mention Michael Nagy,  Wolfgang Koch, and especially soprano Kathrin Zukowski, whose touching presence and gleaming voice made something very special of Ighino

The Viennese went gaga at the end of each act, with especially rapturous ovations for Mister Spyres and Maestro Thielemann. 

Palestrina is one of those big 20th century operas, like Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, Enescu's Œdipe, or Szymanowsk's Krol Roger that could work spectacularly with the Met's resources, but none of whic will likely (or most likely) never be seen there just seems to be no audience for these works in New York.  That's not just a pity, it's a tragedy.  

But this Palestrina is a cause for celebration, so get to Vienna while you can folks, 'cause this is nothing but glorious. 

Pablo Larrain's MARIA: Great Callas' Ghost

Pablo Larrain's latest film, Maria,  begins at the very end of the sad life of legendary soprano, Maria Callas.  Through the long shot  of a camera we see Maria's doctor, butler, medics, and the police waiting for her body to be taken away.  All seem as if in prayer, as an actual prayer - or rather an operatic one - Desdemona's Ave Maria from Verdi's Otello - begins. I couldn't help but immediately think of one of Callas' most celebrated roles, Violetta, in Franco Zeffirelli's production for her of La Traviata. Both open with the heroine's death, then shifts between from past to present, as though in flashbacks. In Maria, it often happens without warning.  It felt - to me - a very Callas-like thing for Larrain to do, but I've not heard anyone else mention this, so perhaps I'm looking too deeply.  That's how I think. Sue me.  

Admittedly, being obsessed with this artist since boyhood, and having seen every bio documentary, read the conservatory programs from her Athens' girlhood, own the entire Juilliard masterclass collection, and more, I was both excited - and anxious for the arrival of Larrain's movie. It did not disappoint. 

Many critics are calling it a slog . . . tedious . . . endless, yet, apart from a single scene which I might have shaved a minute from, I found its pacing perfect . . . all of a piece.  Yes, it moves slowly, gently . . . almost dreamlike at times, but never a slot but rather always with determined purpose and, as it progressed, much like that Zeffirelli Traviata, I felt Maria to be a sort of ghost story, the title character's death bookending her tragedy. 

For the literal minded, I can see this movie as being wildly problematic. There is a 1970's foreign film/art house quality which puts us at a distance.  We become observers, rather than participants.  It feels somehow un-American, a dangerous thing to say these days! All of this is helped along by Steven Knight who adds to an already remarkable catalog of scripts.  Knight provides cues and clues that serve like a metaphysical roadmap as to which direction Larrain should take the story, moving it - and us - through a haze of events both real and illusory.  Near the beginning La Callas commands: Come with me said the diva, and there was really no need to ask,''where?"  Some will perceive this as a sort of haughtiness, but I believe it's actually more of an instruction - a key for us to let go of reason. This is reinforced later when Maria explains, point blank, In opera, there IS no reason.  So . .. that's going to be a big problem for a lot of audiences, but that's actually okay because this is not a movie for them (or you, if you're reading this and feel the same).  

Larrain lavishes everything he has to make his film look and feel both beautiful and liberating, yet also almost uncomfortably stifling and distant. He uses lightness and dark like colors, right down to his shifts between black and white, faded/muted hues, and a dreamlike autumnal wash colliding simultaneously between the outside world of reality, and Maria's drug fueled hallucinatory realm. Through all of this, Larrain and his team provide, unwaveringly, stunning details, from knick knacks on shelves, to housemaid Bruna's flipping of an omelet, or Callas' hiding of pills in pockets, all the way down to her beloved poodles dancing on their hind legs impatiently awaiting their supper.

And then there's Paris.  Looking like Maria's personal dreamscape, with its boulevards and Trocadero Square filled with orchestras and choruses, these fantasy sequences culminate in one of the film's most emotionally beautiful moments. During a rainstorm we see and hear, along with Maria, the Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly as a kimono-clad Maria joins them in a shower of tears and rain. It took my breath away.  

Cinematographer, Ed Lachman's work here is about as beautiful as it gets, and reflective of his achievements. Seamlessly, he blends 35, 16, and 8 mm film stock - both color and black and white - to serve up Larrain's and Knight's vision. They are like the Holy Trinity on this project.  

None of this comes alive, however, without actors and here, Larrain's insistence and vision of Angelina Jolie pays off handsomely. Criticism of Jolie's portrayal had me worried going in, but all that was laid to rest - almost immediately.  It didn't bother me that Jolie is not a Callas clone - in fact, I'm glad they didn't go the fake nose or padded stockings angle to create a Madame Tussauds figure, but rather get beneath the skin of this Maria.  And by this Maria, I don't mean the actual Callas because - well, that's pretty much impossible, isn't it?  That said, while Jolie - especially when viewed head on - may not strongly resemble the real Maria, there are moments when the tilt of the head, or a glimpse reflected in a mirror, feel as though the ghost of Maria is present. Crazy? Absolutely. But, that's also the beauty and the magic of cinema; anything and everything is possible.  

There were a thousand versions of Maria in real life and now, dead for half a century, we have even more; more stories, more versions of them, more . . . everything. That girl from New York, Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoúlos, turned into Maria Callas, and that Maria Callas has, in death, moved into another realm entirely: the mythological. 

Ms. Jolie's Maria is a magnificent creature. Proud, vain, broken, needy, and haunted.  The actor straddles both worlds - real and imagined - with a purposefully increasing difficulty before ultimately not seeming to care which one she's in. It is an almost soul searing thing watching someone giving up. Jolie reflects this in her gestures, her hands, her sad, beautiful face, and we hear it in her words.  At one point she tells someone, someone very important to her, I don't even know if you're real.  Suddenly, neither do we. From the film's earliest moments I sensed in Jolie a kinship and admiration for the woman she's portraying.  She believes in her, speaks like her, and ultimately moves through each scene like the ghost that this Maria is.

Supporting roles, too, are beautifully done, with Kodi Smit-McPhee  as Mandrax, the mysterious documentarian, Haluk Bilginer's oily, near grotesque Onassis, and Stephen Ashfield's supportive, if mildly pushy Jeffrey Tate. Pride of place however, goes to Pierfrancesco Favino's Ferruccio and Alba Rohrwacher's Bruna, Maria's butler and housemaid. Along with Maria, this trio have formed a comfortable, small misfit family.  The love between them can be sensed - even when Maria's seeming annoyance with them is on display. Those moments are beautiful, and provide the movie's (I almost said opera's) warmest and most amusing scenes.  

Since we are dealing strictly with the final week of Maria's life, much of the story is revealed through flashbacks of Maria's youth in Athens, her triumphs at La Scala, the re-imagined (and historically inaccurate) beginning of her affair with Onassis, and a private meeting with JFK. The musical excerpts are fairly glorious . . . until they progressively become sadder and more painful, on the ears yes, but even more so in the heart. 

I've always obsessed with the artistry of Callas, and hungry for everything I can find about her, on her . . . all of it.  But, I also firmly believe that, like all historical figures, their life stories cannot adequately be told in a so-called biopic. If we truly want to know them - at least as best as we are able, it is through documentaries, biographies, research, those who ay have known them, and yet, even those give only incomplete portraits.  But a film, a biopic is always going to be filtered through the lens of the artist making it - which then reflects only his or her  truth.  It is through taking the time to listen and explore the actual work of the artist we get to know what's most important about them. This is not to say that is all they were, for everything they went through personally and professionally is what delivered them to us in the first place. But we can't ever really know that.  Not really.     

So, with its imagined narrative Larrain's Maria does not even qualify as a biopic in any sense. It is more of a tone-poem for the senses where instead of facts or history, we enter a version - a vision, or a reverie if you will, based on the imagined final days of a legend . . . of this mythological Maria everyone thinks they know, but none of us do. Or can.  

Many lines remain with me, but none felt more true than Maria's admission  to Mandrake, I am afraid audiences expect miracles, and I no longer can perform miracles.  

If you can succumb to Mr. Larrain's style . . . the gift he and his formidable company of artists have created, and wrapped so beautifully for us, you may be moved just as much as I was. Am. 

ROCK ME AMADEUS! National Theatre's Astounding Production

 

Time has prevented me from writing anything about my mind being blown a few nights ago watching the 2017 National Theatre production of Peter Schaffer's masterpiece Amadeus. It was exciting to see the work revived - in a different production and edition - in the same theatre it premiered at in 1979.  What a journey this play has taken over the decades since that first night.  

Michael Longhurst's gives this Amadeus about as stunning a production as it will ever likely receive and once again I've witnessed something that left me emotionally spent and incredibly grateful  I'm still alive. It made me remember that despite the wretchedness that surrounds us, the world still allows such magic as to make us forget it all long enough to remember how beautiful it can still be.  

Visually, sumptuous, Longhurst gives his Amadeus a widescreen film perspective, with a large moveable (automatically receding and projecting) platform that accommodates the numerous scene changes and handsomely holds his enormous cast, which includes the 21 member Southbank Sinfonia - so that everything, every gesture feels magnified . . . larger than life  

Since its premiere, Salieri has become one of the great villain roles of the last century and  attracted a wide variety of top flight actors ready to rant, rave and poison his rival, Mozart, but Lucian Msamati may be the best of the many I've seen. His harrowing portrayal covers every possible aspect of Salieri's personality - the pettiness, the jealousy, the rage and self-loathing - to the point I was alternately sympathetic and disgusted by him.  As it should be.

I initially had some issues with Adam Gillen's Mozart. Delivered in an exaggerated Cockney (as was Karla Crome's Constanza) that made increased his already annoying behaviour t o a level that was at times, difficult to take. He makes up for that to some degree with his physicality - literally throwing himself into every scene with an abandon that almost seems dangerous.  All of that however, pays off handsomely in the final 30 or so minutes of the play.  As Mozart's fortunes turn and his demise is imminent, Gillen's Wolfgang broke my heart - and I watched the final scenes in tears. It was beautifully painful and painfully beautiful.  

The Southbank Sinfonia provide not just a consistent soundtrack in music of Mozart and others, including arrangements by Music Director, Simon Slater, but also are part of the action, several of them with lines. The operatic scenes are spectacularly delivered on floating proscenium arches with Mozart in tow several times, and an interesting arrangement of the Queen of the Night's aria that has Papagena sort of echoing the high notes. Sounds strange but it works. Brilliantly. 

While I've loved this play for over forty years, right now I don't think I've ever loved it more. 

Andrew Scott is Vanya. and Alexander, and Sonia, and Michael, and . . .

 

Last night I stayed up to watch the National Theatre's production of Simon Stephen's one-man adaptation of Anton Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA . . .  VANYA, starring the work's co-creator, Andrew Scott.  As a lover of Chekhov's play, and a major fan of Andrew Scott, I've wanted to see this for over a year now, despite its wildly mixed reviews. VANYA appears to be one of those polarizing pieces is loved or loathed . . . or if not loathed, not loved. Well, put me in the love camp - so much so that I watched it all over again this morning.   

Mr. Scott takes on all eight of Chekhov's characters (whose names here are Anglicized) and therein lies the rub, prompting the NY Times' Houman Barekat  to deliver the harshest review titled  Andrew Scott Plays Every Part in ‘Vanya.’ Why?"  Barekat places equal blame on the play's failure with playwright and actor. Whilst praising Scott's challenge as "an impressive feat" he, in the same breath writes:

"Scott flits between the various parts by nimbly modulating his voice and bearing  . . . a certain amount of realism is sacrificed — to help orientate the audience, the characters’ names are mentioned more frequently than is natural, and the female characters occasionally come off a bit campy"

He goes on to describe Scott's performance as "shallow" complaining of coy half smirks and knowing glances to the audience that robs the play of pathos. Further that Scott is the possessor of 

a certain glassy inscrutability that suggests he’s a little too steeped in wry self-awareness to comfortably inhabit any other mode . . . this is Chekhov after all — the best he can serve up is an ironic facsimile of wistfulness. What artistic benefit is derived from having a single actor play all the parts? . . . what was the point?  . . . the play is not well served . . . its pathos diluted. Constraint for its own sake is self-indulgence, and there’s a fine line between a conceit and a mere gimmick

So, armed with that, I plunged headfirst into Vanya . . . and there was not only not a single moment of regret in so doing, but a sense of theatrical magic - even on the screen - that I last saw this past winter in the same company's Frankenstein (with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller). While Mr. Barekat rants about a lack of pathos, I found the play - and Mr. Scott's portrayals - filled with that quality. What made it even more - dare I say "pathotic" (that's not going to make into the OED!) was precisely the bits complained about: the knowing glances, the half smirks, and so on, because they left me entirely unprepared for the inevitable eruptions of the emotional volcano of ennui and resentment and and from Chekhov's original tragicomedy and fully inhabited in Mr. Stephens' brilliant adaptation.  

Despite its title, this is not Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, (which Chekhov himself adapted from his earlier play, The Wood Demon), but an adaptation . . . an entirely new work and NOT merely a translation.  I think the critics that compare it unfavorably to Chekhov were being perhaps a bit obtuse and damning the play for not being . . . well, Chekhov.  In wanting and waiting for Chekhov they missed the point of this play entirely. Of course I could be wrong, but . . . so could they. 

The writing - and the direction by Sam Yates - and the set by Rosanna Vize - , a working semi-kitchen, stairs and doors to nowhere, a player piano (which plays an important part) some plastic chairs, a half bottle of Smirnoff - provide Scott with an emotional playground and allows for all eight characters to spring to life - even if once or twice it can't be helped you forget which character is talking or to whom. Pay attention though and they all have their ticks and unique speaking voices, accents and styles.  It is one of those all too rare, bravura solo performances - a true tour de force with an emotional range that ranges from the lighthearted to moments of searing intensity, rage, pain and hopelessness. And tears. Mr. Scott, more than once, almost seems to cross the line between acting and being - actor and character - and successfully walking that dangerous edge in the world of theatre, is one of the most exhilarating, breathtaking things you can give to an audience.  And that audience - including this homeviewer  - goes mad with admiration and adoration before a clearly moved performer. 

It's not surprising that Andrew Scott was nominated along Joseph Fiennes, James Norton, and David Tennant for this years' Olivier Award (which went to Mark Gatiss' portrayal of John Gielgud). 

Vanya comes to New York this Spring where it will play at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and anyone in range of Manhattan should try to go.  It's really that good.