Interval adventures: Staatstheater Wiesbaden

Staatstheater Wiesbaden

Mentioning my passion for opera to new acquaintances has elicited a near-universal comment on how fortunate it is that there are multiple houses in the region. A good handful of people piqued my interest by following this remark with: "Have you been to the house in Wiesbaden yet?" While Frankfurt sits preeminent among the companies within easy traveling distance, local consensus seems to be that Wiesbaden is, by some margin, the most beautiful house. And on Tuesday, I found out why.

Cupola

House of Cards: The Love for Three Oranges in Wiesbaden

Uneasy lies the head… Act I, scene 1. Photo © Lena Obst

Prokofiev's L'Amour des Trois Oranges has been confusing many and delighting some since its premiere in 1921. (As a clarifying note: the text was translated from Russian into French for its first performance; given in Wiesbaden in German as Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen, with the original Любовь к трём апельсинам on drop curtains.) At that time in America, Michael Pisani notes, "Modernist techniques in other arts were not unheard-of, but were considered grossly inappropriate for the opera house." To complaints about a lack of singable tunes and suspicions that Prokofiev was (gasp!) poking fun at opera audiences, the composer responded that he sought simply to create a diverting piece. Both the irreverent text and the multilayered score, however, would seem to belie such a facile summing-up. It's easy to see the self-absorbed prince and his clever sidekick, not to mention the warring magicians, the fragile princesses, and the cook with the deadly soup ladle, as parodic send-ups of operatic archetypes, while the warring audience factions of the prologue who constantly characterize the piece as being insufficiently comic, tragic, or romantic, are almost impossible not to read as a commentary on opera and theater audiences. The current run at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, of which I saw Tuesday's performance, boasts a crisp orchestral reading and a clever production, but in it, critique and comedy seem like strange bedfellows.

Eugene Onegin: Kuda, kuda...

Letters in the night: Eugene Onegin Act III. Photo © Staatstheater Mainz

Some nineteenth-century critics commented acerbically that Tchaikovsky's adaptation of Pushkin's masterpiece into "lyric scenes" ought not to be called Eugene Onegin at all, but rather Tatiana. Mainz's current run of the piece (trailer here), which I attended on Friday, reminded of the strengths of this position. Johannes Erath's production, stylized and faintly surrealist, offered a meditation on the tragedies of transience (I was unsurprised to find Marcel Proust quoted in the program.) The orchestra, alas, began without distinction and deteriorated from there. The cast boasted some strong characterizations, and some fine singing; the most consistently compelling in both, in my view, was the young soprano Tatjana Charalgina Vida Mikneviciute in the role of Tatiana [Note: Mikneviciute's name is not in the printed Programmheft; digging on the Staatstheater's website revealed that she sang the role in the performance I saw.]

Pushkin wrote about the sensibilities of a world on the point of vanishing, and Johannes Erath chose a moment of societal transition for his production, as well. The costumes of Noëlle Blancpain suggested the self-conscious modernity and self-conscious nostalgia of the early 1960s, and were also used cleverly in characterization (Olga gets neon colors, Tatiana a pillbox hat, Onegin a white dinner jacket, Lensky a Walther PPK.) Generally, the production seemed much more attentive to the text than to the music. The Nurse, who panics about having forgotten what she once knew, is the anguished guardian of gentle traditions, clinging to a silver samovar in the rapidly rattling train where the first scenes are set. Photographic backdrops suggest the inability of the travelers to linger in the landscapes so lushly described by Pushkin. Even the train compartments gradually separate, pulling people together and apart. Assuming increasing centrality during the letter scene is a photo booth: that curious mechanism meant to enshrine moments trivial almost by definition. While the surrealist touches of the production could be claustrophobic or playful, the society portrayed was essentially (and oppressively) ordered, gradually forcing the conformity of all the principals.

Sunday Special: Macht hoch die Tür!

Mainz's Christmas market

This Sunday marks the beginning of a new church year. I love the season of Advent, and couldn't be more ready for it. This weekend also marked my first concerts with a new choir. Having done our full program (to a full house!) on Friday, we got to relax on Sunday with an hour or so of Christmas carols and Advent hymns on the stage at Mainz's Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market.) My fingers were cold, but we were paid with vouchers for Glühwein, so that was only a temporary problem. And I loved getting to sing the wonderful German carols, some of which I'd been taught as a girl, and some of which I was learning for the first time. Händel's "Tochter Zion, freue dich," was simply something I'd never imagined I'd get to sing:

Douce France: Chanson from Von Otter and Dessay

Paris in November. Photo via Buttered Bread.

If the persistent grayness of November is getting you down, Gentle Readers, I have a suggested pick-me-up. The end of October saw two new releases of French art song and popular chanson. Anne Sofie von Otter's Douce France is a two-disc bounty of gems from Reynaldo Hahn to Charles Trenet, while Natalie Dessay's Entre elle et lui is a collaboration with Michel Legrand, and an exploration of his oeuvre. While they're very different projects, I think each is remarkably successful in what it sets out to do.

  I could go on for ages about Anne Sofie von Otter's gifts as a singer of art song (as, indeed, I have in the past.) In contrast to her obscenely lush Les nuits d'été, her voice here is clearly that of a mortal being. And Von Otter sings with great vulnerability, employing a conversational style unusual to the art songs, and illuminating. At this point in her career, it could go without saying that Von Otter has an inspired gift for phrasing, and impeccable attention to text, but these are qualities which give constantly new delights, so I'm mentioning them anyway. Her treatment of the Hahn songs on the disc is playful and sensual, with "Le plus beau présent" and "Quand je fus pris au pavilion" as highlights. She is well-partnered by her pianists, with Richard Strauss allusions in the instrumental part in "Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre" (at least, I think the allusion is to "Cäcilie," if it's not to something more obvious that I've missed.) A refreshingly unhistrionic take on Saint-Saens' "Si vous n'avez à me dire" was poignant. The impressionists were also well represented, with Ravel's "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" and "Ballade de la reine morte d'aimer," and Debussy's gorgeous Trois chansons de bilitis. The name of composer Charles Martin Loeffler was new to me; Von Otter gave two passionate, winsome selections from his "Four poems for  voice, viola, and piano."

Wolfram von Eschenbach, beginne!

The adventures of Siegfried.

Even in the midst of my researches, Gentle Readers, I find myself reminded of opera. This week, I discovered (while looking for much less flashy legal texts) that manuscripts for several of Wagner's source texts have been digitized. So whether you have a hankering for the thrill of reading a handwritten copy of Das Nibelungenlied (as who does not?) or just want to look at some beautiful images, I have links for you. First up: Das Nibelungenlied. Pictured is the first section post-prologue, The Adventures of Siegfried (Aventiure von Sifride.) Good news for all my fellow Walküre-lovers: the first thing we're told is that "Siegfried was a true child of royalty, whose father was called Siegmund, his mother Sieglinde." If you want a line-by-line rendition of the text pictured in readable type, go here; if you want a transcript of the whole thing based on Handschrift A (pictured,) go here; if you want to look at the whole manuscript, go here. If this has piqued your interest, but you just want to read it in English, don't worry; you can do that here.

Next: Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, for triple Wagner-opera points.

Sunday Special: Ubi caritas

Mainz's cathedral, photographed from the opera house

Since reporting from Tannhäuser, Gentle Readers, I've been so out of touch with local opera that I barely know what I missed. (Except the prima of Rinaldo here in Mainz, for which there were no student tickets.) This shocking state of affairs has been brought about by academic deadlines. Once I've presented on my research this week, though, things will be better; and once November 15--favorite deadline for funding organizations and conference organizers alike--is past, opera-going will become positively reckless once more. Rinaldo has only a few more dates, but I'm going to try to make one of them. A new production of Gluck's Ezio opens in Frankfurt this month, which I'm quite excited about. Prokoviev's Love for Three Oranges--possibly the perfect pick-me-up opera for dreary winter weather--comes to Wiesbaden. Perhaps most excitingly, from December to mid-January, Darmstadt will be celebrating the bicentenary of Georg Büchner with a double bill of Wozzeck-operas. For now, though, Gentle Readers, I leave you with this recent setting of Ubi Caritas, courtesy of this week's choir rehearsal: