I wrote only yesterday about the redeeming powers of an exceptional musical experience in the context of a shabby old production. Thomas Langhoff’s 1999 staging for the Berlin Staatsoper is as provincial looking as can be (it is very similar to the one shown in the Estates Theatre in Prague – and I don’t mean this as a compliment) – sets and costumes are anachronistic and display very poor taste, when they don’t look downright cheap, but differently from what I saw in the Deutsche Oper yesterday, the Spielleitung is very efficient and the sense of comedy timing is never lost. More than this, these singers natural abilities are well taken profit of and some scenes seemed almost spontaneous (something remarkable in a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, an opera in which things tends to be a little bit look-how-I’ll-do-this-and-how-I’ll-do-that).
However, the acting is hardly the reason why this evening’s performance was remarkable – here the laurels go to Daniel Barenboim. I have both his recordings (English Chamber Orchestra with Heather Harper and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Berlin Philharmonic with Lella Cuberli and Andreas Schmidt) and find them ponderous and poorly acquainted with Mozartian style and I was bracing myself for a long evening. But fortune favors the bold – although the conductor does not care very much for clearly articulated phrasing, the Staatskapelle Berlin in top form could find clarity in its rather legato-ish approach to fast passagework in the overture, which counted with clean attacks and a flowing but not hectic pace. During the whole evening, the maestro seemed to ponder how fast every number should be by the criteria of expressiveness and polish. He proved this evening to have understood the way Mozart operas benefits from a “concertante” approach, in the sense that soloists and orchestra were always presented in the same perspective, with singers and woodwind responding to each other in structurally commendable and exquisite sounding organicity. If singers needed a bit more intimacy, the orchestra would shift together with them to a softer yet positive sound. Voi che sapete, for example, sounded wholly fresh to my ears – every shift of mood perfectly rendered, oboes and clarinets increasingly seductive during the arietta. The conductor never lost from sight that great comedy always operates on the thin line that separates the funny from the touching, and, while avoiding cuteness, these characters’ feelings were never made fun of. Riconosci in questo amplesso, for instance, has its moments of physical comedy, but it also portrays a mother finding a long lost son – and, as R. Strauss would say of Der Rosenkavalier, one should have one eye dry and the other one wet here. And so we had this evening. My hat for Barenboim – this was Mozart playing of top level, and that he has achieved that relatively late in his successful career only confirms that he is truly a great musician.
Mozart operas tend to be cast from the ensemble in German and Austrian opera houses – and it is relatively lucky that the Staatsoper has so many great singers under permanent contract. Dorothea Röschmann is the Susanna in the video from this very production (with Emily Magee and René Pape) and has since then developed into big lyric roles and had to pay some price for it (she had cancelled some performances and her recent Donna Elviras involved sometimes a Mi tradì transposed down). I am, however, glad to report that this invaluable singer is finding her way back to the top of the game. Her Countess is featured both in a video from London (with Miah Persson and Gerald Finley) and from Salzburg (with Anna Netrebko and Bo Skovhus), but her performance this evening was clearly better than in both these recordings. Although she comes close to holding to dear life by the end of the stretta of Dove Sono (the high a’s were there all right, but they felt like high c# sharps in her physical effort, and the high c’s in Susanna or via sortite were abandoned for the ossia*), this evening she sang with more seamless sense of legato and scaled down more willingly (and comfortably) to piano when necessary. In terms of interpretation, she is a singer who always gets to the heart of the matter – and if one will recall smoother renditions of Porgi, amor, this one unmistakably had a broken heart.
This evening’s Susanna was both enchanting and disappointing. Anna Prohaska is a highly intelligent singer, with stupendous Italian pronunciation, REAL understanding of the text (I had to write that in capital letters, for she found more original and insightful turns of phrasing than almost anyone else since Lucia Popp), sense of style, acting skills and personal charm, but the voice itself is simply too small-scaled for Susanna. It comes in one basic silvery color, but not “silvery” enough to pierce through in ensembles, and her low notes – the fact that you could hear them is commendable in itself – were produced in something very close to Broadway belting. I am not saying that she should never sing Susanna – but I am not sure if she should sing this role now. One could say that Popp, Cotrubas, Freni et al sang this role when they were very young. But those were very different voices, I am afraid. I hope Christine Schäfer has some good and honest friends kind enough to tell her that she should take a break and think about what she has been doing. In the last three years, I have only seen her in bad shape, but this evening it was a bit more serious than this. Considering that the role is Cherubino – and that this singer has ventured into singing Violetta Valéry in La Traviata a few years ago – and that she could barely make it this evening, this cannot be seen as normal. She is a singer I had known and liked from recordings (the Mozart/Strauss CD with the Berlin Philharmonic and Abbado was a favorite of mine for a while) – and it would be sad to see her going down so soon.
Artur Rucinski was a clean and poised Count Almaviva. He lost a bit steam for his big aria, but that did not prevent him from offering clear divisions and a good trill even then. Vito Priante was a most likeable Figaro, in his spontaneous, resonant voice, crystal-clear diction, rhythmic buoyancy and sense of comedy. He does belong in this repertoire and I hope to hear more from him (so far, I knew him from baroque opera recordings). Finally, Maurizio Muraro was an excellent Basilio and Katherina Kammerloher, shorn of her aria, was a fresh-toned Marcellina.
* This may sound picky, but I firmly believe that the Countess should sing her high c’s in this scene. If one remembers Kathleen Battle’s claims for the prima donna dressing room in the Met in the 1980’s, the answer should be clear: “the prima donna is the one with the high c’s, the trills… and the big aria”.
Hi – someone pointed me to your post here on this performance of Figaro, and I enjoyed reading it.
It sounds like Roeschmann continues to refine and improve her performance of the Countess, and I am happy to hear it – she’s one of my favorite singers.
Thank you! You would have certainly enjoyed her Countess last Sunday then.
Congratulations on your blog too – I’ve found your post about Alcina’s Ah, mio cor most interesting – I find this aria particularly important for us to understand why she acts the way she does in the last act and also prepares the ground for the superb Mi restano le lagrime.
Thanks for your review. I was in the Schiller Theater last night and I mostly agree with you.
Barenboim and the Staatskapelle were in great form. D. Röschmann was the best singer in the cast and V. Priante didn’t disappoint (I had heard him in Lisbon before). As for the other major roles, I expected much more from the singers. I found Prohaska hard to hear and Rucinski also lacked power. At a certain moment I found myself thinking if the theatre might pose some accustic troubles to the singers. But then, whenever Figaro or the Countess sang I could hear them very well.
Anyway, the biggest suffering was caused by Christine Schäfer. What a pity.
Caro Paulo,
Que bom ver um comentário de Portugal! Gostei do seu blog e concordo com a sua opinião sobre o Tannhäuser do Johann Botha, que vi em Londres.
Back to Figaro: the acoustics in the Schiller Theater are indeed dry, making voices a bit hard. But as you’ve said, some singers suffer more from it than others. Although Rucinski was not in his best shape on Sunday (he was a very good Onegin at the Lindenoper some time ago), he was quite hearable the evening I saw him.
Thank you for your words in Portuguese!
(Arrived today from Berlin)
By the way, have you seen “Der Freischütz” at the Kommische Oper?
I am not the kind of opera lover who judges a performance solely on the basis of a few high notes – but I do find it ridiculous that an opera house of this caliber cannot find either a Susanna or a Countess (to me it does not matter which of them – when my mother sang Susanna, she sang the c-s) that can manage the high c-s. And if Ms Röschman is not up to it, then maybe she should let the Susanna sing it.
Paulo: well, I’m not really excited about this Freischütz, but maybe I’ll try the new cast later in the season.
Ricky: Me neither – as you could have read above. But I guess Mozart had some expectations about that since he cared to write the notes on the score. In any case, I would rather not have Susanna singing the notes – it is the Countess who is strongly agitated there and the upwards phrase to a high c shows the point better than the rather “well-behaved” ossia. Susanna is just surprised and a bit astonished. So she shouldn’t take the leading line in that trio, I would say.
That said – and ad argumentandum tantum – a very clever singer could pull out that alternative phrase if she made it to sound as if the Countess was trying to compose herself after letting herself go a bit too much. But let’s not forget that composers only write ossia to accommodate singers who cannot do the more difficult option… 🙂
PS – I am glad your mother didn’t find the high c’s troublesome. They can be most of the time… 🙂
Couldn’t agree more that Susanna most definitely should not sing the high Cs if the Countess cannot. Opera at its best, and Figaro is that, uses music to portray characters, their emotions, actions and development and while the notes, especially so in Mozart, are an integral part of this portrayal they become little more than meaningless sounds (even if very pretty ones) if not sung by the characters for which they were written.
Further, while it is certainly desirable, again in particular in Mozart who wrote so precisely, that the characters sing all the notes, it is not indispensable that they do so for an effective portrayal nor is is the ability to sing all the notes, even easily remotely adequate for such a portrayal. Figaro, I have heard it literally dozens of times in the theater and have encountered Countesses who could and and one’s who could not (or chose not to) sing the high Cs and, for my taste at least, the correlation between that capacity and a fully satisfying performance is anything but exact. This particular performance being very much a case in point: despite her failure to sing the Cs she performed a dramatically and musically and enormously satisfying Countess and was very much the star of the show.
Finally, one might think that a House like the SUDL (sic) should be able to find a Countess that can sing the Cs but in fact thats just not consistent with reality. This is arguably the least prominent venue I’ve hear this opera (the others being the Met, Vienna, Munich, Paris and Salzburg – I’ve been disgustingly lucky) and Countesses with this flaw are in my experience closer to the mean than to an absolute exception.
that should
“I have heard Figaro literally…”
and
“Roschmann despite her failure ….”
A different opinion:
http://opera-cake.blogspot.com/2012/03/le-nozze-lancienne.html
Well, Paulo, not that different, only from a different perspective 🙂
Cavalier
As you know, I’ve found D. Röschmann’s Countess beautifully and expressively sung and I agree that most sopranos would rather not sing their high c’s there. And I can’t help thinking that this is a curious affair – Mozart himself found that, although ideally the singer should sing them, it would be wise to give them a lower option. Also, singers normally like higher options – even when they are not written by composers…. But the case here is a curious one – why Mozart decided to write a note higher than anything that, for instance, Donna Anna has to sing while the tessitura is relatively lower otherwise – and precisely in this particular moment? As experience shows us, if there were no ossia and sopranos were supposed to sing these high c’s, this would mean that most sopranos who usually sing the role wouldn’t sing it.
The fact that the whole business is so exceptional makes me believe that its “difficulty” was something that Mozart wanted for this scene – and that he found it particularly telling in musical-dramatic terms. Maybe the strain was a musical dramatic effect or something… He was a composer who understood voices – Konstanze sings above a high c, but the tessitura (if not the range) is significantly higher. Vitellia, on the other hand, involves lots of low-lying passages, and has – on a trio too – to sing a high d – but the role requires a more “dramatic” voice, and the writing couldn’t be more different from the part of the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. As you see, the matter requires more serious consideration than it usually does…