Wagner’s Die Walküre, Dresdner Musikfestspiele (at the Kulturpalast Dresden), 09.05.2024

This evening’s performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre is the second installment of the Dresdner Musikfestspiel historically informed Ring cycle with a combo of the Concerto Köln and the festival’s orchestra. As I have explained in my report from last year’s Rhinegold in Lucerne, this goes beyond playing it with original instruments — although we even had a Stierhorn — but also the attempt to recreate an authentic Wagnerian singing style  based on the teachings of Wagner vocal advisor in Bayreuth Julius Hey. As much as in Das Rheingold, the regular opera-goer wouldn’t find any significantly noticeable difference in this department and would be surprised rather by an orchestral sound that unveils unusual colors, mostly related to the fact that gut strings with controled use of vibrato and less overwhelming brass blend in a more organic way and allow for a more present woodwind section. On the other hand, the experience of hearing voices wrapped (or overshadowed) by strings as a key element of a Wagner performance (with the tingle factor therein involved) is something you would not really find here. In Kent Nagano’s flowing tempi based on the concept of having singers deliver the text in conversation rhythm made this seem less of an absence but rather as an alternative sound picture. In act one, some moments sounded entirely different in transparent perspectives that made Sieglinde and Siegmund’s scene less sentimental and yet more intimate with some cello solos of baroque music purity. And yet it was the most famous pages of the score that shone at their most original: the Valkyries seemed to be riding among gushes of wind when played in violins’ gut strings. 

In terms of singing, again we mostly had a Zaubeflöte cast, and I wonder if small volume has any relation to authenticity. I mean, some singers are naturally louder regardless of their techniques, and I bet that Wagner himself would have preferred a larger voice to go with his larger orchestra. But that’s just me guessing. In any case, having singers new to the repertoire brings some freshness to the proceedings iin spite of the occasional lack of familiarity with the text and the notes. 

That was definitely not the case of Sarah Wegener as Sieglinde, one of the most interesting performances I have heard from a singer in a while. This is the first time I see her, and her fleece-like youthful lyric soprano is easy to like. She employs a wide tonal palette, finding interesting colors in every register, but the best part of it is that she has reserves of power and a solid breath support when she just has to sing out. She is a very expressive singer with such an intense and immediate response to her character’s predicaments that one almost believes she is experiencing all these feelings herself on stage. To make things better, not only is her diction exemplary but also there every word in the text that was uttered with full understanding of its meaning. Her Sieglinde sounded unusually four-dimensional, almost spirited in her infatuation fit Siegmund in act 1 and admirably alert in her shift from depressive to manic in her last scene with the Valkyries. I want to hear more from her in the future. She was well contrasted to Åsa Jäger, whose voice is just the right one for the part of Brünnhilde, a voluminous, warm, round soprano with juicy, easy high notes and a rich middle too. She sings with commendable discipline and musicianship too. Brava. I had seen Claude Eichenberger as the Walküre Fricka in Bern and was a bit surprised by how soprano-ish she sounded this evening. No wonder she was invited to sing Brünnhilde there next year. Her high notes sounded indeed ringing and bright. And she manages to tackle the part with naturalness and some chic too. 

Other than a Tobias Kehrer ideally cast as Hunding, the other men in the cast were both on the light side for the roles. Simon Bailey has a very focused voice and stamina, what makes him sail through the part of Wotan without trouble but with less color than we’re used to hear. He delivers the text really crisply and manages to shade the tone whenever he needs, and a singer in this role definitely needs this in the final scene. If Maximilian Schmitt is probably the lightest Siegmund I have ever heard live or in recordings. Fortunately, he does not try to make his voice darker or bigger and sounds here very much like himself as Tamino or Max. This means some brittleness and a Charaktertenot-like nasality when he is required to sound heroic, but other than this he seemed in charge and offered a young-sounding, vulnerable account of the role for a change.

Last but not least, there was also a lightweight and very efficient group of Valkyries who sounded more integrated in the sound picture of this performance than the usual stentorian octet would have. 

Wagner’s Die Walküre, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (at the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées), 04.05.2024

Die Walküre is the most popular item in Wagner’s Ring. Some say it is more approachable in its melodic description of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s feelings for each other and also of Wotan’s paternal love for Brünnhilde. Others will say that this is the single opera in the tetralogy where normal people are on the spotlight. Anyway, it is a work with a strong emotional content, and it may hang fire if performed in too objective a manner. 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a conductor all about communication, not only with the audience, but also with the musicians working with him. This evening, the friendly terms with the members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic was evident, and also appear to be an evidence that terrorizing an orchestra should not be considered the only way of making musicians give their very best. So, yes, the circumstances proved to be ideal: we had an orchestra with Wagnerian credentials, a conductor in complete understanding with his musicians, everyone involved very much keen on bringing the score to life even without any staging. Why is it then that I took a while before I realized this was the real thing? Six years ago I had seen this Canadian conductor in a Parsifal at the Met. While the intent to communicate was already there, the performance only intermittently took off. Back then it seemed that the conductor had so many possibilities in his mind that it was difficult for him to pick one and stick to it. 

That was not the case this evening, when Mr. Nézet-Séguin seemed simply open to let the music speak for itself. If you ask me to describe his approach to the score this evening, I wouldn’t be able to choose any word other than “effective”. Siegmund and Sieglinde could find love without being rushed by the beat and yet without any languor either. Theatrical as this performance was, it never let go the right balance between structural clarity and transparency. In act 2, Brünnhilde could produce her hojotohos with athletic enthusiasm rather than weight and rigidity, Fricka was able to turn the tables on Wotan allied by the urgent accents of the orchestra, Siegmund had a vision of the afterlife with all the otherworldly frisson one could hope for and Sieglinde was rescued from his death scene among vortices of excitingly articulated passagework from the string section. The last act opened to a battle cry wrapped in airy, gleaming orchestral sounds, Wotan and Brünnhilde conversed in chamber-music-like Innigkeit and the magic fire sparkled vivaciously and brightly. 

If the brass section has its bumpy moments especially during act 1, they blended well with the bright and flexible string section. At no point one felt Wagner’s music as heavy and dark. The sound was essentially Romantic – as one would expect to hear in, say, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, what was also positive for the cast, who had more than enough leeway to scale down and produce softer dynamics whenever they needed. And that’s all for the best, for this was a cast ready to give it all in terms of interpretation. 

Tamara Wilson’s Brünnhilde, for instance, was exemplary in her attention to the text. She never sang a word without finding the right inflection within the context of each dramatic situation. Her singing felt always personal, colorful and intelligent. And, of course, she could only achieve that because she found absolutely no difficulties in her part. Her high notes were famously ringing, free and easy, she never had to force, rounded her acuti with almost classic poise, while softening the tone at will. She managed to sound natural and very much soprano in tone when the tessitura tended to stay in the middle of her range, her low notes very firm too. Ms. Wilson sang this difficult part as an artist and deserve the loud applause and the screams of brava from the audience. As Sieglinde, Elza van den Heever more than sustained the competition in her clear soprano with excitingly firm and bright top notes. And she sang O hehrstes Wunder! so freely, so radiantly and with such unbridled feeling that I can’t remember having being so overwhelmed by it as in this evening. To complete this top-level group of ladies, Karen Cargill sang the part of Fricka in the grand manner, all registers colorful and rich, every word handled expertly. To be fair, the team of Valkyries this evening only confirmed the Wagnerian girl power in this performance: amazing voices all round. 

This run of concerts are French tenor  Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s debut as Siegmund. I had listened to his singing of the first act in a broadcast from Rome and found his vowels excessively covered and a bit lacking spontaneity. Although there are moments when one expects a bit more squillo (especially when he calls Wälse for the promised sword), my impression this evening wouldn’t involve the adverb “excessively”. Maybe purer vowels would help him to find a little bit more spontaneity in his textual delivery, and yet even in his first run in the role,  he sings it with more consistent legato than many an experienced Siegmund (definitely with less breath pauses than you usually hear) and with no difficult of singing piano with tonal consistency.

This is the first time I see Brian Mulligan, and my first impression was that I had never heard a voice so clearly in the baritone spectrum in the part of Wotan. It would soon show a darker color, but at moments the tone could seem clear, sometimes almost tenorish  and yet his low notes were always positive and solid. It is an exceptionally well focused voice, more forceful than voluminous, and there is a basic intensity to his singing that keeps the interest even when the delivery of the text becomes a tad mechanical. At times he looked exhausted, but vocally the only effect was the lightening of the tone. Other than this, he sounded consistently firm and sound. 

Finally, Solomon Howard was a powerful, really dark-toned Hunding, frightening as he should, but his German is still a bit lifeless. 

Charpentier’s Médée, Opéra de Paris, 03.05.2024

“A neglected masterpiece” is a notion that inspires sympathy. It involves a genius whose efforts in creating something brilliant have procured him no compensation until someone — generally after the artist’s death — finally does him or her justice by giving this work (and its creator) the due credit. And Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée apparently is the ideal example of that. Although Charpentier’s talents were acknowledged during his lifetime, the “official” court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully made a point of keeping his rival in his place, and this explains why the younger colleague took so long to première his first (and only) tragédie lyrique in 1693.

Unfortunately, Médée’s original run was a fiasco, the audience disliked it simply because it wasn’t exactly like a tragédie lyrique written by Lully, even if Charpentier had followed all the basic rules. It was considered pretentious and too “Italianate”. And it was definitely forgotten for a couple of centuries.

But all that’s history now. On listening to Médée in 2024, nobody would call it either pretentious or Italianate. To be honest, in its ideal rendition of the concept of Musikdrama, I would call it even proto-Wagnerian. Charpentier’s ability of setting the text to music without any impediment of the dramatic flow is a lesson to every composer, the experience being rather an enhanced declamation, where pitch, note values simply intensify the meaning of words in a way. As much as in Monteverdi, You won’t find a recitative-aria structure here, but Charpentier proves to be even more flexible in structural terms and less showy in his writing for the human voice. Melody appears — as in… Tristan und Isolde — when it happens to be the best way for a particular line to be delivered. Also, Charpentier is a master of establishing shifts of mood. Sometimes even inside the same line, the instrumentation will adapt its colors to reflect the change in the character’s feelings or intensions. 

The work feels also very French in the way the beauty of the text is almost a character in itself. Thomas Corneille, the less famous brother of the author of Le Cid, wrote for Charpentier a hell of a libretto, probably the best take of this myth, surprisingly modern in the four-dimensional way he portrays the main character and discusses the role of woman in society.

When the story begins, we hear that she is a foreigner and thar she used to be a formidable sorceress who made it possible for Jason to perform famous exploits and that she is unwelcome in Corinth. And yet we do not see it; Medea is first shown as a loving mother and wife. Even when it is obvious that Jason is shamelessly manipulating her, she responds with unwavering trust. In the moment he asks her to leave Corinth (without her children), she and apologizes for trying to move him, for her own unhappiness will only bring her joy if this means she is helping him to achieve his own success. So, yes, when it is made clear to her that she has been abused, it is impossible not to take her side, and one almost forgives her for doing the unforgivable. There is a war outside, men are acting tall and mighty and dealing with her as if she was a stupid little thing, when in fact she could be winning the very war alone _if she were not being a wife and a mother_. She cannot be both at the same time. And the way Charpentier _musically_ shows us that transformation is what makes Médée a masterpiece. There is nothing pretentious there — it happens naturally and inevitably. 

William Christie is Médée’s greatest advocate. He has conducted it in different occasions and productions and was the first one to record it. His CDs with Lorraine Hunt are the absolute reference for this work, and it was really exciting to see that live it is even more thrilling than in home listening, his orchestra Les Arts Florissants (named after a work by none other than Charpentier) offering a vital, protean, fluid, theatrical performance. Bravissimi tutti. 

David McVicar’s 2013 staging is less successful in its impossible task of showing us chariots pulled by dragons, demons and other magical effects. The action is set in a WW2 context, there is an attempt of showing Créon and Créuse under a comic light, with a splash of old musical comedies in the dance numbers that only diffused dramatic concentration and made these characters (and that of Jason) as meanies rather than plainly egoistic (what would made them even worse). That said, Mr. McVicar never stands in the way of Thomas Corneille’s poetry and found reasonable solutions for Medea’s invocations of demons, the burning dress and even for the closing scene. Moreover, nobody can call this poorly directed. Even when there are 50 people on stage, every one of them is fully in character, their movements perfectly blocked, the dramatic intent always clear. 

In the CDs, Lorraine Hunt offers a powerful performance in the title role, especially caustic in the last two acts, and I wondered how Léa Desandre would stand the comparison in her lighter voice and usually lovely personality. It is actually a credit to this French-Italian mezzo the fact that her performance has absolutely nothing in common with Lorraine Hunt’s. She sang and acted the good-girl part of the story with disarming sincerity and tenderness in velvety tone and crystalline diction, while she seemed to have tremendous fun in her bad-girl act, making frightening facial expressions à la Sissy Spacek in Brian de Palma’s Carrie, moving in feral, angular movements and judiciously distorting her tone to create the right psychopathic effect. Brava. 

In the recording, Mark Padmore’s singing is so mellifluous that you have a bad time believing that Jason is such a d****. With a splash of Charaktertenor in his haute-contre, Reinoud Van Mechelen offers something more forceful, metallic and dangerous in the part. If you need someone to deliver Charpentier’s lines with absolute poise while sounding a tad nasty at the same time, Mr. Van Mechelen is your man. Ana Vieira Leite’s silvery-toned Créuse misses something of Monique Zanetti’s patrician quality (and tonal creaminess) in the recording, but it seems that this was the idea in this production. She offered a stylish performance in very good French too. Laurent Naouri relished the buffo approach as Créon, his low register still very solid, and was well contrasted to Gordon Vintner’s leaner sound in the part of Oronte. Emmanuelle de Negri sang and acted famously as Nérine. Her scenes with Ms. Desandre some of the best moments in the evening. All minor roles were cast from strength, especially Julie Roset as Amour and Bastien Rimondi in various roles

Schubert/Strauss/Mozart/Schoenberg/Ravel, Regula Mühlemann and the Lucerne Festival Strings (at KKL Luzern), 28.04.2024

“Orchestral song” are two words than seem to go together well, but at second thought one begins to wonder if an essentially “intimate” genre such as the “art song”, especially in its German Romantic variety (what we call Lieder in every language) can really glow amidst the formidable splendour of the orchestral sound. Composers like R. Strauss have indeed written Lieder meant to be accompanied by the orchestra and also other Lieder with piano, but let’s not jump to conclusions here. He himself would make orchestral versions of some of the piano items without any change to the vocal line. Furthermore, many a critic has considered his songs operatic in style and distant from the miniaturistic interpretation style one usually expects from someone who sings, say, Schubert. 

This is why I have always had some trouble with orchestral adaptations of Schubert songs. To be honest, I’d rather pass a concert with such a program, but Regula Mühlemann and the Festival Strings Lucerne encouraged me to give them a try by offering R. Strauss’s Lieder, which are always fun, regardless if you think them too operatic or not. Last time I heard orchestral versions of Schubert songs, Claudio Abbado was conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and Christiane Stotijn was the soloist. In other words, we had a mezzo soprano. Even when writing for a high voice, Schubert tended  — in order to help textual clarity — to keep the tessitura central. With a piano accompaniment, a tenor or a soprano can keep a conversational tone even if the piano sounds too full or loud. That’s not the case with an orchestra, and this is why I found it curious that a singer those voice is on the light and high side would choose them, even with a small orchestra as this evening. 

To be honest, I would say that Ms. Mühlemann generally could make something out of this relative handicap, the problem lying rather in the program itself. For instance, although R. Strauss is one of the greatest composers for the orchestra of all times, his version of Schubert’s Ganymed is surprisingly square. almost predictable in its pointless adherence to the pianístic writing. As a result, Ms. Mühlemann sounded rather coy in her attempt of keeping the text clear in an uncongenial area of her range, the sensuality suggested by poet’s verses entirely lost. On the other hand, Nacht und Träume is an ideal candidate for orchestral transposition with a piano part obviously emulating the sound of a string orchestra. In his adaptation, Max Reger wisely limits himself to only responding to that, and Ms. Mühlemann sang it spontaneously in seamless legato. Felix Mottl’s orchestration for the famous Ständchen couldn’t help doing with lots of pizzicato and yet the song seems fake in its orchestral hall atmosphere. I mean, no one would take a full orchestra for a serenade. Our soloist sang it artlessly and with purity of tone. 

When it comes to Gretchen am Spinnrade, I confess that I cannot see why one would like to hear it in any other way rather than in Schubert’s original setting, in which the piano arpeggi are central to the concept. Delivered by the second violins, not only do they lack clarity but tend to disappear in the big picture. Ms. Mühlemann here wisely went for something more operatic, which had the effect of making the climax less climactic. Although Benjamin Britten’s take on Die Forelle misses Schuberr’s brilliant aural depictions of the water flow, Ms. Muhlemann sang it as I’ve probably never heard it before. It is an elusive song, one never truly gets the poet’s point-of-view here, and a bright-eyed childlike report struck me as the right way to perform it. Franz Liszt’s adaptation of Erlkönig is the famous exception that confirms the rule. If you think of it as a Lied where THE SINGER has to embody the tale’s three characters plus the narrator, the piano is the ideal accompaniment, for it allows he or she to darken and lighten the voice without having to worry with loss of projection. Now if you think that THE ACCOMPANIMENT can create the atmosphere for each character and the singing is basically a narration, then Liszt’s multicoloured use of the orchestra makes it a mini-Tonepoem with voice. In any case, it requires a voice with more volume and tonal variety, but Regula Mühlemann’s extremely clear diction and crispness of tonal delivery did the trick – and she can be a scarily sweet-voiced Erlking too.

The Straussian part of the program proved to be more flattering in vocal terms. We heard here the usual suspects light sopranos tend to choose in concerts like this: Ich wollt’ein Sträusslein binden pure-toned and direct in expression, Schlagende Herzen bell-toned and without the usual indulgences that make it operetta-ish and probably the most convincing rendition of Muttertänderlei I have ever heard, rhythmically crisp, almost pop in tone and very idiomatic. I had never heard Die Nacht with orchestra, and Martin Braun’s orchestration did not make me think it is worth the detour. I have the impression our soloist would have benefited from the piano version to achieve the ideal spontaneity this songs require. On the other hand, she really surprised me by the un-canary-ish way she sang Amor. Here one generally hears a coloratura soprano going for a fast tempo to show off her flexibility, and the effect usually tends to the exhilarating. Mr. Mühlemann chose for a slower pace (and proved to have the lungs to hold these lines in these circumstances) that made it all rather “lyric” in approach. She also used this to work on the text and dealt with the fioriture as if they were integrated in the line. Als mir dein Lied erklang, however, is a song that does require a more lyric voice and took her close to her limit. The voice still keeps some roundness in exposed climactic high notes, but at least at this point of her career, looses some color. Last year in Bern, when she sang the Vier letzte Lieder, she seemed to be in stronger voice, offering something a tad more solid when she needed to shift into the fifth gear.

As encore, she first offered a pièce de resistance for coloratura sopranos, Alexander Alabiev’s Nightingale (in German), in which she eschewed vocal narcism while trying to deliver it as song-like as possible. In comparison, Edita Gruberová in her studio recording sounds far more self-indulgent with tempo, more generic with the text, more flamboyant with decoration (and a bit more precise in her trills and staccato notes). Finally, R. Strauss’s Morgen sounded touching in its naturalness and verbal expression.

The Festival Strings Lucerne has broken free from the baton of a conductor and performs under the direction of its concert master, Daniel Dodds. They opened the program by an animated account of Mozart’s Symphony no. 31, the strings offering crisp articulation and ideal balance, the phrasing dramatic and accents crisp and purposeful. Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin seems to be an obvious choice for a formation like this, in which the musicians keep a chamber-music-like eye-to-eye relationship. They seemed to be having fun and worked their way towards an audience who did not seem to be at first waiting for the next vocal item. Schoenberg’s 1896 for strings and harp, almost decadently late-Romantic was an interesting transition for the Strauss songs. In the vocal items, the soprano acted as a primus inter pares and the close communication with the concert master proved to be an advantage. When she needed an extra second, they would get it. When they needed an extra second, she would get it too.

Bach’s Kantate BWV 128, J.S. Bach-Stiftung, St. Gallen (at the Kirche Trogen), 26.04.2024

On listening to Bach’s choral cantatas, one has to believe that he was a man who believed in first impressions. He never spared resources in the opening chorus, offering extravagant choral counterpoint framed by the the cantus firmus of a church hymn over colourful orchestration. In other words, musical fireworks. Being a master in musical rhetoric, this posed an extra challenge for him as a composer. If you think that a composer like Vivaldi had the task of writing music to the Latin text of the catholic mass and could have an entire choral number based on three words like “Hosanna in excelsis”, you will realize how much freedom this means in creative terms. Bach, instead, had to make musical sense of texts with far more complex content. One can only imagine how fortunate he must have felt to have verses such as those written by poet Mariane von Ziegler for the Cantata BWV 128: they almost demand Bach’s music. The opening sentence “On the example of Christ’s ascension alone I base my own journey heavenward”, for instance. Is there any better image to represent the way Bach structured this number? We have our lesson – the church hymn Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr (All glory be to God on high) – providing material for all the voices around it, either the counterpoint established by altos, tenors and basses or the orchestral music carried by the violins and than the two horns. The atmosphere couldn’t be more brilliant with the brass instruments, the oboes, the vivid rhythms. One feel almost compelled to move feet, shoulders and head to this music, you can almost feel the enthusiasm the congregation in Leipzig in 1725 felt on hearing it: “all doubt, anguish and pain is hereby overcome”.

After an expressive recitative for the tenor, the festive atmosphere is reprised in the bass aria with an exciting virtuosistic trumpet solo, florid writing for the bass and a dramatic transition to recitative to reflect the text’s more meditative turn. A second aria – actually a duet for alto and tenor joined by an oboe d’amore – follows in entirely different mood, the harmony is a bit tenser, the voices intertwine in almost sensuous way. The text tells us that the omnipotence of the saviour is beyond human understanding and you can have a glimpse of it if you refrain from talking. It is something that cannot be expressed by words, just like… music, and maybe this is why Bach chose to set these verses with exquisite melody, before the cantata ends in the last chorale in which the congregation expresses it wishes to be able to see his glory for all eternity.

Although conductor Rudolf Lutz did not fail to create an atmosphere of animation in the opening chorus, natural horns in such demanding music can be tricky and create a messy impression in music that requires precision. In any case, the J. S. Bach-Stiftung’s chorus shone in its usual clarity, balance and flexibility. The soloists this evening left absolutely nothing to be desired. Countertenor Jan Börner sang with absolute purity of tone, tenor Raphael Höhn phrased with exemplary sense of style, finesse of interpretation and tonal smoothness and Andreas Wolf offered a tour de force in his forceful, rock-solid and flexible bass. In his aria, the difficult trumpet solo was also competently dispatched, especially in the second performance.

Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Theater Basel, 21.04.2023

I rarely leave the theatre during the intermission. I might have done it four times in my life — and last time it was Christoph Marthaler’s Freischütz in Basel. This is why it took a while before I convinced myself of purchasing my ticket to his new production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea for the same company. After some consideration, I decided that I would not leave no matter how much I disliked it. After all, this time I was willingly taking the risk. Yet in the end, I cannot really say there was some unforeseen danger here, for what awaited me could have as well been the same staging seen in the Freischütz. A single set realistically depicting a vintage-looking public hall — check. Cuts in the score to make room for music and texts from other works — check. Unwritten pauses mid-number in annoying levels — check. Depressingly not funny gags in serious scenes — check. Underplaying of any emotion — check. Efficient but nonsensical Personenregie — check.  All that said, the libretto of L’Incoronazione di Poppea is altogether more solid than the one in Weber’s Der Freischütz. Therefore, even if the story was reduced to the shallowness of “they’re all 100% evil”, it still survived the overload of pointless creativity. 

If conductor Laurence Cummings proved to be very complacent with the trimming of the score (the whole prologue to start with) and the disfiguring pauses, he seemed rather conservative in his approach to Monteverdi’s score, going for the concept of a deluxe continuo throughout the opera, resorting with economy to his string ensemble. As it was, the cast — even the actors with fallible voices — had all leeway to use notes and words to unfurl their interpretation wrapped by warm, light yet very much present accompaniment.  Mr. Cummings sings well too (don’t ask).

I first found the idea of Kerstin Avemo as Poppea a bit adventurous and compelling at the same time. She is a charismatic actress, but I wondered how fluent she could be in the style of baroque opera from the 17th century. As it was, even if there are Poppeas with more idiomatic Italian or more dexterous with fioriture, she musically established her character’s personality from note one. The sound has something sexy, she phrased with imagination, the text was clear enough and she could color the tone in all registers. For some reason at some point she suddenly sang Schoenberg (Herzgewächse) and surprised the audience by shifting to the very high tessitura and challenging harmony without flinching. Last time I saw L’Incoronazione (in Aix), Jake Arditti was Nerone. I remember finding him then understandably strained on occasions yet with no lack of stamina. This evening he sounded more comfortable in the part, singing richly throughout. The text lacked some crispness, though, and his Italian is accented. The Ottavia in John Eliot Gardiner’s 1995 recording, Anne Sofie von Otter offered a masterly performance as the Roman Empress. She was in very good voice, only an occasionally abrupt gear change on the passaggio showed she is no longer at her freshest. Other than this, the tone was rich, the interpretation was to the point at all moments and she exuded glamour. Brava. Owen Willets(Ottone) was well contrasted to Mr. Arditti in his warmer tone and Alfheidur Gudmundsdottir sounded aptly quicksilvery as Drusilla. Andrew Murphy brought a firm, rich tone and refinement of expression to the role of Seneca, but this evening’s littore Jasin Rammal-Rykala’s darker and deeper bass made me think that maybe he should have been given a chance in this part . Stuart Jackson was a refreshingly unexaggerated Arnalta who sang his lullaby in honeyed tone. 

Telemann’s Orchestral pieces and cantatas, Musikkollegium Winterthur (at the Stadthaus Winterthur), 20.04.2024

Although no one doubts Georg Philipp Telemann’s importance among late baroque composers, one tends prefer Bach, Handel and Vivaldi first when buying concert tickets or recordings. It is difficult to explain why. Telemann had no lack of imagination, but my guess is that his melodic invention is not as persuasive as Bach’s, Handel’s or Vivaldi’s. In other words, his music needs a little bit more help from performers. If I am to be honest, the reason for me to attend this concert was the fact that I had never seen conductor Reinhard Goebel, whose radical Bach recordings were central to my CD collection back in the 90’s and I wanted to check if he had grown soft or still kept his mojo. Fortunately, option “b”. Definitely.

Mr. Goebel leaves nothing to chance and makes sure that every note attain its discursive purpose. During this concert, I often remembered Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s famous essay about baroque music as Klangrede. Every movement of the Orchestral Suite “Hamburger Ebb und Fluth” has a title; the sarabanda, “The sleeping Thetis”, the gavotte “The playful Nayades”, the menuet “the pleasant zephyrs”, and under Mr. Goebel’s baton you didn’t need to read them to know what was what. Everything bursted into life and spoke to the audience. The second orchestral item of the program, the “Cricket Symphony” (the title of which has more to do with the whimsical writing with piccolo and two double bass solos than with insects) had the audience smiling at Telemann’s sophisticated sense of humor and surprised by how the composer absorbed the novelties that would lead to what we call today “classical style”. It is admirable how the Musikkollegium Winterthur can sound like an entirely different orchestra depending on the conductor on duty. Here these musicians offered music of excitingly precise articulation in very fast tempi and responded to the conductor’s unrelenting demand for panache and virtuoso quality. Bravi.

The two cantatas performed this evening couldn’t be more different. The 1730 rather red-tape “Sey tausenmal willkomen, o auserwählter Tag” is all glitter and coloratura, while the 1765 “Ino” almost sounds as if Gluck composed it instead. While Ino was famously recorded by Gundula Janowitz, Sey tausenmal wilkommen is something of a rarity. I only know it from a 2017 recording with Robin Johannsen, who shares with this evening’s soloist, soprano Elisabeth Breuer, the technical abandon with trills, staccato, very long runs, but lacks a little bit juice in her middle register, what made her occasionally hard to hear. The tessitura in Ino is far more congenial to Ms. Breuer’s voice, whose high register shines freely and brightly. Before this concert, I have listened to Michael Schneider’s recording with Ana Maria Labin, a singer you’d see cast rather as a prima donna in operas like Ariodante or Alcina. As the text and music are extremely dramatic (“Here I totter beneath the beloved burden/That seized my lacerated arm” etc etc), the impact of a richer voice does make a difference. Ms. Breuer’s instrument goes rather for the seconda donna shelf, and yet she sang with great intensity, very clear diction, admirable precision and amazing stamina (Telemann can be a bit stingy with breath pauses sometimes).

Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, Teatro di San Carlo, Napoli, 13.04.2024

If you have in mind that Ponchielli‘s La Gioconda is nobody’s favorite opera, it has been receiving significant attention short of its 150th anniversary. First, it was surprisingly chosen as the central item in Salzburg’s Easter Festival with the Santa Cecília Orchestra and a glamorous cast under Antonio Pappano. Then after some decades of absence in Naples, it has been scheduled for a new production in Naples with almost the same cast seen at the Grosses Festspielhaus. 

With a libretto with all things Venetian, curses, accusations of witchcraft, blessings, rosaries and a ballet scene, a director would have to be exceptionally creative if he or she wanted to go for anything but a traditional staging. And that’s ok – especially with Christian Lacroix’s glamouroso costumes. The problem lies rather in the complete lack of Personenregie. I mean, I understand it is impossible to really direct a cast of stars, and I don’t envy Romain Gilbert’s job at all here. And yet there was so much nonsense going on, poor blocking, poor timing, empty gesturing that it felt like a staging right from the comedy by the Marx Brothers. As it was, it felt a bit like a pageant in which you could guess what everybody would do before they did it (the prima donna would chew the scenery in a generic way, the tenor would look bored etc). 

One could say that the conductor might have faced the same problem, but Pinchas Steinberg is such an experienced maestro that at this point he could conduct this on his sleep. He relished the Italian orchestra’s bright sonorities to make it all clear, fizzy, animated and transparent enough for this non Italianate cast to pierce through without any loss in presence.

When you listen to Italian recordings from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, the first thing you’d notice was that all voices had a hallmark squillo, even the low voices had this buzzy, focused, upfront sound that just flashed in the auditorium. And yet the title role in La Gioconda is a hard fit for a “bright” soprano. It is mostly central in tessitura and often low, until it’s not. It’s a bit like Fiordiligi on drugs. This is probably why Maria Callas’s first studio recording is considered by many a reference. It’s very much a soprano voice, furthermore on the metallic side. Yet the middle and low register were famously incisive, her diction exemplary and we don’t even have to mention that the interpretation was vivid. I obviously never heard Callas live, and the only singer I had ever seen in this role was Violeta Urmana, who was rather taken for granted — and that was unfair. It’s a tough part and she sang it really efficiently in a classy albeit not truly gripping way. I can’t say if Anna Netrebko was on a bad-voice day, but the last performances I’ve heard from her show that her upper register has lost a bit of its former core. Never so evidently as this evening. Her high notes sounded breathy and puffy, there was some instability and intonation was perfectible. She felt more comfortable with softer dynamics in her upper range and offered beautiful mezza voce throughout. On the other hand, her low notes were almost massive, more than those from the mezzo and the contralto in the cast. And this is an undeniable advantage in this role, even if some could say that there was too much of this advantage. I can’t say her Suicidio! was something for the ages —the important contrasting lighter phrases in E un di leggiadre rather awkward and imprecise — and yet she shone whenever Gioconda is being naughty, especially in the scene when she is ready to ruin Laura’s life until she changes her mind. In moments like that, all her instincts would br invariably right, musically and scenically. 

The fact that Eve-Maud Hubeaux’s mezzo is very different from Luciana d’Intino’s or Fedora Barbieri’s is not a disadvantage per se. This Laura sounded young, vulnerable and tender just like the character is supposed to be. When she tried to beef up the sound like an Italian dramatic soprano, then the voice would lose focus and grate a bit. La Cieca is a difficult part — low for mezzos and high for contraltos — and Ksenia Nikolaev’s was at least firmer in tone than most singers I’ve heard in it. 

At this point in his career, Jonas Kaufmann’s tenor is so dark that his high notes actually sound smaller than the rest of his voice, and that’s something you’d rarely see in an Italian tenor. There were moments when the tone sounded on the verge of breaking and there was all kind of glottal attacks and releases and a prevailing throatiness, but he seemed a tad more plugged in than in the last times I heard him. He sang some often abused phrases with good taste and affection. While some may say he often took refuge in piano in high lying passages, I’d argue that he did it adeptly and convincingly. This is the first time I’ve seen Alexander Kópeczi and all I can say is that I’d like to hear more from him. His is a beautiful noble bass voice, a bit too noble for the part of Alvise Badoero, which he sang with commendable sense of line and finish. I leave the best for last . With his deluxe baritone, tasteful phrasing and intelligent use of the text, Ludovic Tézier, in a way, stole the show, making a one-dimensional bad guy something more complex that one could have imagined. Bravo. 

Bizet’s Carmen, Opernhaus Zürich, 10.04.2024

I cannot think of any other work in the operatic repertoire as paradoxical as Bizet’s Carmen. It is the most popular opera in the repertoire, and yet Nietzsche chose it as a positive example in his critique of Richard Wagner’s work. It is also an opéra comique, with light music, dance, local color, castanets, and yet it ends like a full Romantic tragedy. It is the no. 1 example of a character in an opera libretto who does not correspond to sexist standards of woman behaviour and yet she dies a victim of gender violence for refusing to correspond to those very standards. This is maybe why no performance of Carmen can really respond to every requirement made by music and text. No singer, conductor – and maybe orchestra and chorus – would be able to be so Protean in order to be alternately serious and comic, French and non-French, elegant and earthy, flexible and punchy in such a consistent way. So, yes, performing Carmen requires an angle – and this also means it is going to please only part of the audience. And the tourists, of course.

In his new production for the Opernhaus Zürich, Andreas Homoki seems to be fully aware of that, and chose a point of view so specific that I wonder who he wanted to please. Or if he wanted to please no-one, but – for my own surprise – I realised that I can be counted among those who enjoyed the experience. First, it does not look like a variation of what he usually does. Here we don’t have the impression that the creative process started from “get the revolving stage for we’re producing… what again?…. ah, Carmen!”. Second, while Carmen obviously still speaks to contemporary audiences, it is very much a 19th century work which has been reinterpreted in many and many ways. The single thing about operas that concretely remain from the days their creators were alive is (in most cases) the opera houses where they were created. You can walk inside these buildings the same way Verdi or Wagner did. Being there is no second-hand experience. Even if few genres are so intrinsically related to a specific opera house as the opéra comique, the building where Carmen was premièred in 1875 does not exist anymore. It burnt down in 1887, and the current Salle Favart was only opened in 1898. And yet this is just a side comment. You might have seen many Carmens and they remain in your memory, but every time you see it, the opera house is there, be it the new Salle Favart, the Opernhaus Zürich or the Teatro alla Scala. It is the real thing behind the fantasy, it is the fantasy’s skeleton.

In Mr. Homoki’s production, we see the backstage of a theatre as the opera starts. During the overture, a guy in present day clothes walks in and finds the score of Carmen on the floor. Suddenly there is a red and gold curtain and Carmen, Micaela, Escamillo make themselves visible. Other characters appear, grab him and dress him as a soldier. Suddenly, he is Don José. The audience is also forced to “take part”: all lights in the auditorium are turned on, and we are the “funny-looking people” the other soldiers like to observe while they have nothing to do. In act 3, we notice that costumes and props have changed in style. We are no longer in the 19th century. It is snowing, people dress as in the 1930’s, Micaela appears to be a military nurse. Act 4 takes place in our days. Everybody follows the bullfight in a TV brought on stage and plugged in an extension handed by the prompter. Other than this, the story follows its course without any manipulation.

The director, however, wants us to understand that the sets are actually the Opéra Comique in the time of the first performance, than during WW2 and then in the current days, but this is something you can only learn by reading the program. As it is, we do realize it is _a_ theatre in three different moments in history. In any case, I wouldn’t say that this is problematic at all. Even if you had never seen Carmen, you’d know what is going on and understand what this staging is about. The main scenic elements here are curtains that establish contrasts in mood, in space, in time, but mainly between reality and fantasy. Although this is rarely striking in visual terms, it is always efficient in an almost predictable way, what seems to be the point in a staging where you are being reminded that “this is not real life”. What is real is the fact that you’re there and the role that you have been assigned is: Don José. So, as much as the audience would like to identify with Carmen or even Micaela, statistically a member of the audience is probably Don José. You just need to read the news to realize that. The building where Carmen was first performed may not exist anymore, but violence against women is sadly very much here.

Gianandrea Noseda’s task is comparatively simpler, and he did not seem keen on complicating it either. He too had an angle, and it wasn’t making it a grand Romantic opera (as Karajan used to do), but rather a piece of 19th century exotica, with strong rhythms, kaleidoscopic sound picture, with prominent woodwind and an integrated rather than dominating string section. I was tempted to write that this was an “opéra comique”-approach, but the way the orchestral sound was often imposed on singers made me think twice, especially when one had a light-voiced cast as the one this evening.

The idea of a Swiss Carmen was something I had to get used to, but I have decided to be open-minded. Furthermore, Marina Viotti has an advantage: she was born in Lausanne and French is her native language. As such, not only did she deliver all dialogues famously in a fruity, warm voice, but also she sang the text with admirable clarity. Her tonal coloring, word-pointing – allied to solid musicianship and imagination – made her interpretation fascinating. You would get the irony, the seduction, the impatience, the irreverence, it was all there in the way she handled notes and words. But then we get to the point – does she have the mojo for it? Well, yes and no. She comes across as rather stiff in her swing and she is not a very supple dancer either. So, no, her Carmen is a bit lacking in the the usual hip-shaking sultriness seen in singers in this role. That said, I personally prefer unsmiling and non-seductive Carmens. In my opinion, she is not trying to ingratiating herself to anyone or to convince anyone of anything. So, any staging gains a lot from having Frasquita and Mercedès as the seductive ones, while Carmen is just doing her thing. In this sense, I believe Ms. Viotti would gain more from a production in which she were relieved of her twerking duties. In any case, even if she often sounds charming, the part is on the heavy size for her voice, and when hard-pressed, her mezzo may lose focus and projection, sounding a tad harsh too. In moments like Non, tu ne m’aime pas or in the card scene, she was often overshadowed by her colleagues, and she worked really hard for her money in the closing scene. Her Don José, Saimir Pirgu is similarly light-toned for the part of Don José. His middle register lacked color and was produced with some tremulousness, and the contrast with a forceful high register where he did not seem afraid to push stood in the way of real legato. He managed the mezza voce in the duet with Micaela rather adeptly, but curiously less so in his aria. In the acting department, he has the right attitude for the role, and gave the last scene all he’s got, including vocally, flashing some big acuti in the hall. Natalia Tanasii’s shimmering, creamy soprano is the kind of sound one expects in the role of Micaela, which she sang with great affection. The role of Escamillo ideally requires some vocal glamour and personal appeal. It is true that one rarely sees a singer who does full justice to the role of Escamillo, and this evening Lucasz Golinski’s baritone sounded quite curdled, and he did not seem really at ease playing the alpha male either.

Wagner’s Lohengrin, Opéra National du Rhin (at La Filature, Mulhouse), 07.04.2024

Less than an year after the unveiling of the Opéra de Paris’s latest production of Wagner’s Lohengrin, the Opéra du Rhin is presenting its brand new staging of the same work around American tenor Michael Sypres’ debut in the title role. In a text in the program, director Florent Siaud makes references to the philosophical discussion around the idea of community and its decline, about the influence of classical theatre on Wagner as a catalyst for a national project and even to Margaret Atwood, but you don’t need to know any of this, for I am afraid all ideas remained in the program. What one can actually see looks as if the theatre had planned a run of Spontini’s La Vestale and changed it mind after the sets had been built. The costumes are nonsensical, the Personenregie is mostly stand-and-deliver with stock gestures galore and it all looks terribly kitsch. I mean, I wish someone had read that text in the program and really staged what was proposed there, for the ideas were worth staging. 

The musical side of the performance was not entirely consistent, but far superior in quality. Aziz Shokhakimov offered a rather schizophrenic approach to the score. At moments, it felt rather kapellmeisterlich as if the sole purpose of his conducting was keeping everything in place. This has occasionally paid off in an unusually clean account of the chorus announcing Lohengrin’s arrival, for instance. The cast too might add that the maestro tended to help them by keeping the orchestra in a manageable volume in difficult passages. But then Mr. Shokhakimov would turn into Mr. Hyde and abruptly press forward (at the risk of synchrony with the chorus at times) and unleash the orchestra. This has also paid off, especially in the scenes where Ortrud and Telramund were involved. At other times, you just felt that the orchestra would have preferred more considerate tempi — I have seen their string section offer juicier sounds and its woodwinds less hazardous in other occasions. There were also moments when you wished things were a little bit wilder rather than just well-placed. Anyway, it felt like a box of chocolates, and you were kept curious about what you would get next. 

Although Johanni van Oostrum’s Elsa sounded more secure in exposed high notes last year in Munich, she remains a remarkably sweet- and warm-toned Elsa who sculpts her phrase with poise and sensitivity. And she is also a good actress. I have recently listened to a broadcast from Amsterdam in which Martina Serafin took the role of Ortrud and I cannot say I was looking forward to seeing her after the news she would replace French mezzo Anaïk Morel in Strasbourg and Mulhouse. Well, I am glad to report that she proved my expectations wrong. If scenically she was a bit all over the place, her singing was probably the most exciting feature of this performance. At this point of her career, if her voice can no longer be described as a thing of beauty — especially the piercing and overvibrant high notes — it has undeniable presence in the hall in all registers, and still allows dynamic and tonal variety. Moreover, not only does she deliver the text with clarity but also with intelligent word-pointing and feeling for drama. If the interpretation turned around “Ortrud the witch”, this witch had remarkable sense of humor too while convincing Elsa of her repentance and then eating all her rival’s argument for breakfast in their confrontation.

Michael Spyres is a trouble-free Lohengrin. His German is clear, the style is irreproachable, he finds no note too low or too high, he phrases with variety, it’s all there, but for spontaneity. As often in roles on the heavy size for his tenor, he goes for a complex, dark and slightly nasal tonal quality that robs high high notes of radiance and makes his mezza voce grate a bit. But again: the high notes and the mezza voce were unproblematically there and this already places him above most singers in this part. Josef Wagner too has a rather dark voice and also a bit grainy in the role of Telramund. During act 1, one had the feeling that his high register was a bit recessed, but maybe he was saving for act 2, when he proved to have stamina and sustain the competition with the orchestra with a voice a bit short in projection. Timo Riihonen may not be the noblest-sounding King Henry, and yet his big tightly focused bass filled the hall famously throughout the opera. Last but not least, Edwin Fardini was a forceful, rich-toned herald and with clear diction too.