Fierrabras: Say Goodnight, Franz.

Schubert's Fierrabras has long been poked fun at, considered musically uninteresting, unstageable and given every other imaginable excuse for rarely being produced. Needless to say, I was thrilled to receive the new DVD set starring Jonas Kaufmann. I can honestly say rarely have I been more let down by a production. Musically, it is terrific, but what I had to endure watching was dull, insipid and so over-directed I decided then and there to never warch this again.


Claus Guth's production occurs entirely in a pink-striped drawing room surrounded by 30+ doors, the only scenery, a riduclously oversized chair and piano, the dimensions of which are about 15 feet high with the lid open, and which occupies half of the stage. Seated at the piano is a chubby, diminutive actor miming Schubert, seated in a 4 foot tall high chair, working on (presumably) the score. Awesome. The Schubert Clone looks like James Levine doing a bad Jackie Mason imitation, and seems to have been directed throughout to look "nervous" - his mouth, more often than not, opened in the manner of an inflatable sex doll. It's both annoying and ghastly.

Dialogue is taken away from the characters and given to him, allowing us to hear him shrieking each and every syllable as if in audition for Volker Schlöndorff's "The Tin Drum." His major action is about the stage, handing singers freshly written music and, before they run out of notes, posing their limbs, heads, etc. as if mannequins, into gestures he finds heroic or tragic. The opera has been reduced to a single concept: Schubert staging this misguided pageant in the home of a patron, the characters garbed in the formal wear of the day. Schubert, identifying himself with all three of the heroes means, of course, Roland, Eginhard and Fierrabras are all costumed identically to the composer, right down to his little spectacles. When the four are grouped together, all I could think, "early 19th century boyband."

For the second act, the piano has been to one corner and, of course, tipped over. The men now sport breastplates and wield instead of shields, miniature evergreens. Genius. At the French front Schubert runs about the stage, opening doors to reveal the soldiers; men in suits, and wearing either a Fez or some sort of tiny helmet. To rally his troops, Eginhard pulls out a child's toy horn and blows. The moment is neither cute nor is it heroic.

Whenever a scene ends the stage empties, as Schubert wanders its width, open-mouthed (I swear I saw drool pooling in close ups) more and more bemused and confused than the last time. It's actually ugly and difficult to watch.

Fierrabras' glorious finale is ruined as we spy a prone Schubert atop of piano, feverishly completing the score, and racing to hand copies of it (he did his own copying?) to the chorus and soloists, then arrange them into concert formation as they sight read it, never taking their eyes from the music in their hands.

I can't begin to describe how angry I got watching this. Musically, Fierrabras remains the treasure trove of gorgeous melodies, solos, ensembles, choruses, military music, etc. that I fell in love with years ago, but I felt this a missed opportunity to surprise those who felt Schubert's only worth is to be found in his songs or symphonies. Schubert's symphonic style actually works brilliantly in the work's extended pieces, where solo moves into ensemble with consummate craftsmanship. the aria cum duet for Eginhard and Emma "Der Abend Sinkt Auf Stiller Flur" which morphs from an aria into a duet for Eginhard and Emma, is simply one the most beautiful things Schubert ever wrote.

I'm simply too exhausted . . . and angry from the watching this to go on about the singing other than to say, from top-to-bottom, it is well cast, everyone seguing from dialogue through song splendidly, notably soprano Twyla Robinson's in the most exciting performance of the evening. Kaufmann is predictably excellent (though it is a rather short role) Juliane Banse sounds dark and wild as Emma (reminding me of Mattila in the role some 15-20 years ago) and Laszlo Polgar shows he still has it all in spades. Franz Welser-Most has the Zurich forces working magic and the score really makes a strong case for the opera. If only the staging did.

What should have looked like this:




Instead looks like this:

Lehnhoff's Beautiful Take on Parsifal

Where to start. I’ve had this DVD set for a few years now and keep coming back to it as my Parsifal of choice. First off, Matti Salminen is simply terrific as Gurnemanz. While the voice may be a hair less gorgeous than 20 years ago it is wanting for nothing. Salminen remains a formidable stage presence and his grasp of Gurnemanz is complete. Even a slight grandiosity and arrogance in Act I cannot diminish the role's sincerity. Even as he watches the Grail Ceremony this Gurnemanz gives off an aura of superiority - even over Amfortas and Titurel. His transformation in the third act - fervent, wise fervor and in his wisdom, possessor of a truly inspiring humility and sense of order. It is a miracle of a performance . . . just amazing from every aspect.

Christopher Ventris is the most remarkable Parsifal I've encountered and plays him exactly how I've always felt the role should be played. This Parsifal is a wild child/animal boy in the extreme and Ventris looks terrific in his amalgamation of skins, sticks, enormous leather breeches, face paint and thick-as-rope coils of dreadlocks. Initially I had reservations about his sound - light textured . . . almost boyish - but my, oh my how this singer captures this character in every nuance and gesture, facial expression and body language and movement. Indeed Ventris's rare physicality almost defines the role in its totality. Where most Parsifals in the Act I Grail ceremony are directed to remain still and out-of-the-way, this Parsifal is climbing over every surface of the stage, examining everything and everyone: entranced, amazed and full of awe at the wonderment of all he is experiencing. I can't imagine Ventris's Parsifal being bettered.

Later, following "The Kiss" we witness Parsifal's shock and Ventris makes it a palpable experience of shared epiphany. All is made clear and he knows what he must do and the direction life now takes him. This is, of course, all there in Wagner's score, but Ventris, almost more than any Parsifal I've heard or seen, gets this across and it's an emotional, cathartic moment.

I've always felt that after his feet have been washed in humility by Kunrdy, Parsifal must remain barefoot for the balance of the opera. Too many Parsifals (including the Met's) don him in kingly/priestly garb, and I find this the wrong direction for this character. I've always believed Parsifal should be almost bared at this point - bringing a true sense of humility and openess as the realm of the Grail moves into another dimension, another "being." That Ventris, stripped of armor, and barefoot enters the temple and performs the rites this way is EXACTLY right! (Siegfried Jerusalem's early Bayreuth Parsifal in the late 70's also remains barefoot for the ceremony).

Waltraud Meier knows Kundry better than any singer alive. It might even be called her signature role. While the very top of the voice can be a little wild - tight and constricted - it is only those notes - which she still can it. Actually the upper range of her voice works well and, as already stated, she knows what this character is all about.

A giant giant eggshell/cocoon apparatus comprises the first part of Kundry's costume which dominates and then transmogrifies throughout Act II. Next is an 18th century looking gown, which leaves her inert and unable to move - which is finally shedded revealing a simple (and sweat stained) shift laying Kundry down to her bare essence. Powerful, powerful imagery.

Tom Fox's Klingsor is creepy, larger than life - almost Kabuki in its intensity. Suspended - balanced in some bizarre glass circle above the stage it lends a really sinister air to the proceedings.

Thomas Hampson is just a touch light of voice for Amfortas - but for once, it doesn't matter a whit. He is inside this role and I couldn't keep from crying at the torture - this eternal night of woe this King must endure. Hampson brings a sense of tragic horror to the role that adds yet another layer to this complex character. His sense of wonder and release, finally able to die at peace, released from the curse of his wound is profoundly moving.

I found myself crying - as I have since my first Parsifal at 14 years old. But this time by the end I was sobbing out loud. I probably would have held it together seeing this in the theatre, or in the company of others, but I'm glad I got to watch this all by my self and fall apart just as this work demands of me.

Nagano leads such a magnificent performance with nuances and shading that are rare indeed, not just in Parsifal, but in any work. The responses from the chorus and orchestra - the differences between even pianos and pianissimos is astonishing and add a gauze like delicacy in sections that make the score all the more moving.
fair.

I usually prefer my Kundry to die. I don't think it's a Victorian "judgment" call - it's what she wants. It's what she's waited for for centuries. Release and to sleep without waking.

I like the direction Lehnhoff takes this production. There is a sense of having to move on to keep the brotherhood of the Grail alive. We can sense the fetid stagnation of the present condition of the Knights. In the Act I ceremony the contrast between Parsifal - so youthful, so alive - with the Knights grey and stiff, could not be more vivid. Yet, the Grail sustains them still and the beauty of the ritual remains evident and enthralls Parsifal - even without his understanding.

Kundry does not die here, but rather leads Parsifal, and eventually we see the Knights, one-by-one following them down abandoned railroad tracks into the unknown, a procession into another realm, another order as Wagner's postlude offers promise, hope and redemption. An utterly beautiful ending which makes great dramatic and philosophical sense.

How special and rare it is to experience a production of so familiar a piece that continues to work on such a cathartic and profoundly emotional level - yet equally challenges and stimulates the mind as to its meanings.

This is easily one of the finest, best produced and most satisfying opera on DVD I possess.

Dresden's New Traviata: Next Stop The Met?

Can you even imagine this production playing at any house in the U.S.? Blood Will Be Shed!

Salzburg Hit Onegin: More Miss Than Hit

Last year it seemed absolutely everyone at Salzburg was clamoring about director Andrea Breth’s monumental, updated production of “Eugene Onegin” and indeed, it was one of the most reviewed performances I’ve ever read of – I pored over some 30 reviews of the opening night – and nearly each seemed to be outpraising the previous in the heaping on of superlatives. I saw several clips while the show was still running and found what I saw enticing in the extreme. Well, now having watched the entire thing on DVD, twice I’m not as excited. Musically, I find it thrilling and eye opening, but dramatically it runs from red hot - like a fire poker in the eye – to luke warm.

There’s not a thing wrong with strong willed directors wanting to update and take a fresh look at an old classic – I WELCOME it - but when the will of the director blatantly ignores what is happening in the music imposing his or her will OVER what the director intends – then I have a problem. And I had problems here.

As terrific as Anna Samuil is in the Letter Scene, dramatically there was something lacking – something in need of tightening up – not on the heroine’s part, but on the director’s. The decision to not have her in pajamas or a nightgown proved, for me at least, a seemingly inconsequential, but ultimately glaring mistake. Breth has already made us aware this Tatyana is no shrinking violet – is, in fact, a strong willed (and slightly spoiled), young woman. But she’s still a girl and we need SOME vulnerability and there was next to none found here. Despite Samuil’s lovely shaded singing, magnificent lighting (car lights shining through the woods and windows) . . . despite incredible stage machinery rotating the sets showing Tatyana tearing through the house and out into the woods with what can only be described as “love fever,” we do not quite get (or at least I did not get) the sense that her epistle to Mr. O was particularly difficult, much less an all night vigil. Even having her remain in the same jeans for several days didn’t really convey that. There absolutely MUST be the element of the girl’s restlessness, of her insomnia, of night passing into day and it could have been as easily remedied by giving the gal a goddamned nightgown. Having her sit, pensive, noisily pecking away at a typewriter was for me a rather novel idea – just not a particularly good dramatic one. Just me I guess.

Earlier on, in one of the very best, liveliest,and most infectious peasant choruses in all of opera, the Larin servants, farmhands and neighbors perform it motionless as a chorus of automatons arranged properly in concert formation, faces stripped of any emotion as we watch the ghastly attired Madam Larina (her hair in curlers no less) frolicking with a pair of moppets (and nearly showing us her “business” in the process).

Peter Mattei (one of my favorite baritones) makes Onegin entirely unappealing, eliciting almost no sympathy for his plight. Onegin already IS somewhat unappealing, but to burden him now with a jaded, been-there-done-that playboy attitude misses Onegin’s point entirely. To Mattei’s credit he sounds terrific and follows, to the letter, his directress’s whims turning a melancholy, ennui-ridden young man into a mean-spirited, selfish and arrogant prick. Great.

Much was been made about Breth’s total transformation of Madame Larina and it’s true: few characters have morphed so entirely as the Larin girls’ mama. Instead of a kindly, pensive disillusioned, broken-dreamed, still elegant and intelligent woman we’re given a gaudy, shrewish, manipulative, self-obsessed cow. Wonderful.

I also had to scratch my head at the rambunctious, drunk fest that took the place of Tatyana’s name day celebration. Do people really find this that innovative? Does this add anything at all to the drama? I don’t think so.

And speaking of parties and celebrations, I will NOT apologize for finding the current directorial fad of removing the Third Act Polannaise to be a mistake. It is, in fact one of the most yawn-inducing clichés perpetuated upon the world of opera in the last decade. And there have been a lot. (Oddly, Carsen’s re-working of it for the Met, is the only example of where it worked. All others, including this one, fail miserably in my opinion). Breth here makes a little joke: Ha ha! I’m going out on a limb here, but in, say, 20 years or so some hot shot Austrian playwright making his operatic debut in Onegin will DARE to place the women into Empire gowns, the men in tails and fill the stage with gilded mirrors and crystal chandeliers as couples elegantly glide round the stage in sophisticated choreographed formations and the audience drop their jaws thinking “My, God! It’s almost as though this music was MADE for this!”

Sorry to spoil the party that everyone else enjoyed (I guess I’m just a bad guest!) but it felt to me that Breth was trying hard to make Onegin an intense, unsettling, brooding dark opera, a statement on class distinctions and society – as well as on boredom and honor. The problem is Tchaikovsky already did that and what I feel was chiefly achieved here was merely an accentuation of the ugliness of these characters . . . and unattractive costumes.

I was amazed by Martin Zehetgruber's elaborate sets – magnificent in every regard – and I would love to see another stab at this Onegin as despite how I may come off here, I think Breth has some very good ideas: the portrayal of this matriarchal society; the Larina disdain for peasants and workers; Madame Larina’s sheering the men like sheep; the contrast between the “old ways” still being hung to by Filipevna with the new world ideas of Madame L.; the disdain and boredom of the strong-willed Tatyana (having Filipevna die, unnoticed by the girl she did everything for, chilling . . . brilliant); the duel – heartbreaking; the blazing intensity of the final scene – there is plenty of good stuff here, I just found it all didn’t come together for me as for everyone else.

With so much attention lavished on the principal pair of non-lovers, the majority of characters almost fade which is a shame as all of the vocal performances here are outstanding, particularly Joseph Kaiser’s charmingly idealistic and more youthful sounding than usual, Lensky and Ferruccio Furlanetto’s glorious turn as Gremin.

Musically, Daniel Barenboim gives one of the most frenetic, violent readings of this score – make that THE most violent reading of the score anyone has probably ever heard – the tensions at times are almost unbearable. Unfortunately, regardless of what anybody else has written (maybe they were swept away by the passion) it was a sloppy, inelegant reading from the Vienna Philharmonic, with intonation problems, rifts between stage and pit, uneven entrances from the orchestra itself (a lot of this). It is thrilling, in that way surviving a ride on a high speed, broken rollercoaster is thrilling – but I’m pretty sure I’d never want to get on again.

There is clearly an audience for this – and I will try to come back to it, but I can think of a half dozen other “Onegins” on DVD (more if you add pirates) that are ultimately far more satisfying: particularly Graham Vick’s production for Glyndebourne; and Robert Carsen’s minimalist, brilliant production for the Metropolitan Opera.

Regie Woes: Going too far? Nor far enough? Discuss!

It's no secret to those who know me that I enjoy well thought out (not "off-the-wall") regietheatre productions, updatings, etc. I give almost any-and-everything a chance. What I have an increasingly difficult time accepting are productions so "out there" that nothing is what it seems with few audiences actually appreciating what they're seeing. (I'm not talking about the chronic complainers who despise anything being moved to a time period other than "traditional" - these people are rarely happy).

Such productions are even more frustrating when for a work off the beaten path, or one that continually has a hard time getting an audience. So, initially, when I read of Canadian Opera's new "Pelleas et Melisande" - starring Isabel Bayrakdarian and Russell Braun - I was elated and thought of planning a trip up North. Then I saw review after review - and how the long evening is divided in half but a single intermission - and how more than half the audience bailed out (how painful to perform to a full house one half, followed by an empty one for the balance).
Here are some snippets of a few of the reviews I read:

"a post apocalyptic take on the troubled kingdom . . . resembles nothing so much as a head on collision in the middle of nowhere between two trains, one loaded with paintings by the late Jackson Pollack and the other crammed with enough discount Chinoiserie to open a dollar store or stage a send-up of the forthcoming Olympic opening ceremony."

The above review centered exclusively on the production with (literally!) not a single mention any of the vocal performances, and just provided the names of the cast (and not by role), and but a single sentence on Debussy's score!

It made me wonder if in the future we will not see mention made of vocal performances, merely the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of the production, and lurid details about the staging.
I was immediately put in mind of those ghastly photos of the Salzburg and Covent Garden productions with Simon's last go at Pelleas withi he and Braun required to wear those ridiculous white silk pants - about 4 feet wide across the hips and looking like lifesized hideous Harlequin dolls- and Melisande precariously perched 10 feet above the stage on a tiny step jutting out from the rear wall with 3 dozen copies of her gown hanging emptily against the wall. And the moment when the entire stage is lit in Broadway marquee lights reading "PELLEAS & MELISANDE."
I love Pelleas - I love it in concert, staged, recordings, but when something so one-of-a-kind and rarely put on gets the "train wreck" treatment, I really have to wonder WHAT a director was thinking; could the creative team all have been on the same page? Can the company (all of them losing money) have thought they were doing the best, giving their best, using their resources wisely?

I've been in an ongoing argument with someone about Mr. Noble's "Macbeth" for the Met (I am "pro" he is "con") and many of his arguments sound like mine above. I suppose it's perhaps to what degree one can take "tampering" with the stage image.

But back to the Pelleas at hand. Oddly, days after reading one bad review after another, I found a single review that was the most intelligently thought out of them all . . . and a rave for the production and the singing:

"a first-rate cast, intriguing design and insightful direction bring out the work’s strange beauty and make it dramatically compelling. This is the first time this critic has been so drawn into this opera’s world of mystery and half-light . . . Hunka is superb . . . The detail of his acting and the pain that sounds in his dark, velvety voice make him a victim as much as the title characters. Braun has Pelléas cover a dramatic arc from initial naïveté and timidity to a final defiant acknowledgement of his love in ringing heroic tones. Similarly, Bayrakdarian beautifully voices the change in Mélisande from the terrified creature Golaud first finds to a fully self-confident woman. Yet, she, unlike Pelléas lives long enough to encounter an even greater mystery where life and death are linked.

Dany Lyne’s (stage) design imagines the sumptuous Indo-Chinese garbed court of Allemonde . . . a kind of pier to separate themselves from the blasted landscape of disease and poverty below them gives the fairy tale a political edge and ultimately highlights the futiliy of such effort. Under the baton of Jan Latham-Koenig the COC Orchestra gives a ravishing account of Debussy gorgeous score."

Now, isn't subjectivity an interesting exercise?

p.