Reading List: Warum Oper?

The last few weeks of my reading-on-public-transit time have been spent with "Warum Oper?" (Why Opera?) a collection of interviews with opera directors which was published in 2005. Barbara Beyer, herself an opera director, leads 14 conversations circling around this question. "Why opera?" quickly splits into "Why do you dedicate yourself to engaging with opera?" or "Why does (or should) society engage with opera?" The answers provided by those interviewed are remarkable for being both rigorously thought out and intensely personal. Working one's way through these conversations provides insights and opinions from a "who's who" of directors working primarily in German-speaking Europe: Calixto Bieito, Claus Guth, Peter Konwitschny, and Martin Kusej among them. Somewhat to my surprise, Karoline Gruber was the only woman whom Beyer interviewed. I loved reading the book, but its virtues make it difficult to summarize. Rather than working through a set list of questions, the conversations as reproduced here seem to flow from topic to topic, responding to issues raised, sometimes structured to provide contrast with (or responses to) other interviews in the book. As someone not very familiar with the history of movements and key figures in 20th-century opera direction, I enjoyed the background provided on previous generations of directors, and was surprised by the diversity of approaches and philosophies represented by those interviewed. I was also impressed by what all the directors (with the possible exception of Sebastian Baumgartner) shared: a deep passion for and trust in opera scores, and tireless willingness to challenge themselves.

Edgar: O gloria, o voluttà

Oper Frankfurt assembled a luxurious cast for two concert performances of Puccini's second opera this week. Not knowing when I'd get the chance to hear Edgar live again, I jumped at the chance to do so, especially since it also offered the opportunity to hear Angela Meade again, and Bryan Hymel for the first time. Mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner joined them in making the most of the music, and making the principal characters both more plausible and more sympathetic than they are as written. What struck me first on listening to recordings of Edgar was the theatrical pacing and use of the orchestra colors. In Michele Girardi's chapter (in here)  covering the work, though, the focus was on the patent weaknesses of the libretto. According to Girardi, Fontana committed "gross linguistic and metrical sins," forcing the composer to "attempt the impossible in making up for for plot deficiencies with music." Although it's not Puccini's most bold or sophisticated music, I did find the libretto harder to ignore in performance than in recordings, and often hard to excuse. The opening scene offers a representative example: the woodwinds, growing in number, evoke waking birds, while a breeze rustles through the strings; chimes are succeeded by a clear bell… and then the chorus comes in and tells us that it is dawn, that the last star has disappeared, and that a faraway bell is ringing. (I couldn't help contrasting it mentally with the gorgeous naturalism of Bohème's Act III opening.) The plot of Edgar centers on the eponymous hero, nominally torn between the soprano who sings aubades about almond blossoms and the mezzo who was raised by traveling Moors (!) and sings about survival of the fittest and about torrid kisses. He seems more interested in Byronic introspection than in either of them, though, symbolically burning down his house when he takes up with the mezzo at the end of Act I, going off to join nationalist endeavors as an act of repentance and self-purification for taking up with the mezzo at the end of Act II, and staging his own funeral as an aesthetic and social experiment in Act III. There's a baritone who hovers around the edges of the drama, being in love with the mezzo and leading the soldiers, in both cases for reasons which are unclear. At the work's climax, the mezzo is tricked by the tenor and then excoriated by the hypocritical chorus, so she stabs the soprano in the back. In short, it's the kind of drama that begs for a concert performance (or for a really good critical production.) And Frankfurt's concert performance was of a very fine caliber indeed.

Verbrechen und Geheimnisse und Schuld: Reimann's Gespenstersonate

On the outside looking in: the student Arkenholz
Photo © Oper Frankfurt

Yesterday, I attended the last performance in Oper Frankfurt's premiere run of Die Gespenstersonate, Aribert Reimann's 1984 opera based on Strindberg's play of the same name. Walter Sutcliffe's production, making use of a stage placed diagonally between two tribunes in the Bockenheimer Depot, was sleek, with appropriate twists of the surreal and the claustrophobic. The space was used very well, I thought; although Strindberg's rivalry with Ibsen made the use of a dollhouse ironic, the image worked well in setting up a drama where voyeurism and manipulation are central. I also quite liked Kaspar Glarner's costuming, precise in its evocation of differing periods, alluding to the zombielike endurance of the bourgeoisie which Strindberg and Reimann dissect. Lear being the only one of Reimann's operas I had any previous familiarity with, I was worried that I might miss a lot in the music. But while I may have missed much that would repay further study, I found Die Gespenstersonate direct, emotionally gripping, instantly drawing the listeners into its world. Each of the figures has a distinct musical characterization, brought out vocally and in the orchestra. The small ensemble, led by Karsten Januschke, deserves high praise for a clean, richly textured performance. The strings were truly spectral, with creeping tritones not the only thing suggesting something devilish about the sinister Direktor Hummel. Low woodwinds droned menacingly; the piano and harmonium (both played by Vytis Sakuras) provided the parlor music of nightmares. Always closely bound to the text, the orchestral writing built the suspense of a drama that shows a world of jealousies and pretense, of exploitation and self-protection, a society "sick at the spring of life."

Winterreise: Johannes Martin Kränzle & Hilko Dumno in Frankfurt

When I got off the Frankfurt subway on Tuesday night, the lady in front of me was carrying a well-used score of Der Winterreise under her arm. When I gained my seat for the evening's performance of Schubert's great song cycle, the music student next to me was frowning anxiously at the marginalia in his score, while the two elderly women behind us were happily quoting and humming snatches of the cycle to each other. For this educated and expectant audience, Johannes Martin Kränzle, ably partnered by Hilko Dumno at the piano, gave an interpretation of unusual dramatic vividness, creating emphasis in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. I was fascinated to be shown new things as Kränzle led the audience along the wanderer's snow-covered paths.

Le coeur se creuse: Werther in Frankfurt

Order vs. the artist: Werther, Act I
Photo © Oper Frankfurt/Wolfgang Runkel

Until last night, Werther belonged to the category of operas I'd never seen live, despite its being solidly established as part of the standard repertoire. I'm glad to have amended this under such favorable conditions: Frankfurt's current revival boasts not only an excellent cast, but a cool, intelligent production by Willy Decker that provides a welcome counterweight to the emotionalism of Massenet's score. Decker's visual language is straightforward and effective, dividing the nature where Werther absorbs experience and sensation from the Bailli's house by a sliding wall. The Bailli's reference to it as "his kingdom" appears as a hollow reference to a pretense of bourgeois order which he cannot uphold: the image of his dead wife has a stronger presence than any of the living in this repressed and depressive atmosphere. The emotions in the score are officially forbidden by the bourgeois society on stage: Massenet is writing in and for the time of Ibsen, not that of Goethe. The children's toy houses reappear as the village of Act II; Albert and Charlotte are separated as they are bound by the enormous dining table where they preside over all the parishioners. I particularly liked that Decker's production creates many silent, musically sensitive interactions among the characters which helped give a clear emotional through-line between the opera's episodes. Credit is due to the revival director, Alan Barnes, for making poignantly clear how each of the opera's characters is imprisoned. Even the Bailli is depressed rather than feckless; Schmitt and Johann function like Shakespearean mutes, personifying the unimaginative apathy which, as Goethe's protagonist observes, can be as dangerous as malice. It is they who bring the messages which interrupt Werther and Charlotte's attempts to break free of their prescribed social roles. Charlotte, for all the calm which Albert praises, has a lively intellectual life, and is aware, with painful intensity, of the emotional life which she is being denied. And for once we see a Werther whose Todessehnsucht is present (and credible) from the outset: he devotes himself to art and nature alike; but he is exhausted by the constant effort of maintaining his refusal to compromise.

Die Erd ist höllenheiß: Darmstadt's two Wozzecks

Getting to hear Alban Berg's Wozzeck is always a treat, and on Saturday I had the opportunity to hear it paired with Manfred Gurlitt's Wozzeck, composed almost at the same time, and, in contrast to Berg's, almost never performed. Both works use the text of Georg Büchner's "dramatic fragment"; the composers selected and ordered the scenes differently, but a great deal of the material is shared by both operas. The bicentennial of Büchner, who lived in Darmstadt, provided the impetus for the city's opera house to present the works together, with a shared director and creative team.  Berg was famously inspired by attending the belated stage premiere of Büchner's play in 1913; Gurlitt was in charge of the stage music for those Münich performances. Berg's opera had its sensational premiere at the Berliner Staatsoper in December of 1925; when Gurlitt's Wozzeck was first performed in Bremen the following April, under the composer's baton, newspaper headlines spoke of it as the "other" or the "second" Wozzeck. Although Gurlitt's opera may stand inevitably in the shadow of Berg's masterpiece, the Darmstadt presentation made a good case for it deserving better than oblivion.

Questa donna conoscete? La Traviata in Mainz

The dark side of diva worship: Mikneviciute and ensemble, Act I (Photo © Martina Pipprich)

On Tuesday, I got to see the second of four performances of La Traviata in Mainz's new production by Vera Nemirova, whose Tannhäuser I found so impressive. Both the production and performances (as well as the Programmheft) bore witness to the kind of thoughtful engagement which Verdi's opera so richly deserves and too seldom receives. In Nemirova's staging, Violetta is an opera singer. And choosing this path to deal with the themes of how she is objectified, and how both celebrity and sex are commodified by the society around her--around us--proved enormously effective. Her body is fetishized; her behavior is policed. This is especially striking in the finale of Act II, where all sing of how great her sacrifice is; of how great she is; and Violetta herself is left entirely alone while they do so. In this environment, symbols are fluid and sex is a game. Even life is treated as a game, as Flora's guests wait for the next adrenaline rush, or the next scandal. Annina, who truly loves Violetta, dreams of the impossible fiction in which the course of true love runs from romantic encounter to ecstatic reconciliation. But Violetta is more complicated than this… and Nemirova not only implies, but creates audience complicity in making assumptions about her. I, at least, had my assumptions disproved twice: the weary but resolved woman who comes on stage during the overture, to sit at the opera star's dressing table and put on her wig, is Annina; the woman who enters Flora's party on Gaston's arm, defiant and brittle in her flirtatiousness, clad as a strip dancer, is not Violetta either (she enters later, bundled in furs, equally brittle.) I felt that the opening of Act II was not as strongly staged as the rest; but the dramatic momentum of the opera was maintained well through the chilling finale. As Violetta dies, delirious and abandoned, Verdi's aching orchestral elegy was greeted with stricken silence.